Quick Turn Photonic Component Manufacturability Rapid Prototyping

The Air Force recognizes the need for innovation in assembly-packing-test for fabricating airborne high-performance photonic components.  Transmitters that can operate at various optical wavelengths are desired to allow re-configurability, increase system capacity, reduce the amount of electronic module board space, and eliminate complicated optical fiber cabling harnesses while minimizing the need for external optical couplers.  Optical fibers networks can be used in Mil-Aero and defense applications, either as point-to-point data links or as portions of the global system LAN network.  New versatile optoelectronic technologies utilizing dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) networks are the solution for these high bandwidth applications with the added advantage of re-configurability.  These advances are necessary to replace legacy technologies, which are both costly to maintain and are not adaptable to meet emerging needs. A key component for DWDM networks is the development of multi-channel optical transmitters, which is the focus of the work proposed here. BENEFIT: Our technology will result in quick demonstrable custom devices state of the art devices with out the expensive R&D and manufacturing high costs with new novel photonic devices. Our optical bench process allows for the low cost demonstration of our component devices or COTS components for rapid demonstration of innovative assemblies.  Such a procedure allow for versatile realizable program for the development of an alternative method to the typically a standard very labor intensive and costly process photonic assembly process.