Bidirectional single fiber low-cost optoelectronic interconnect for automotive applications

Current trends in vehicular technology reflect an increase in the number of electronic modules, leading to more complicated and expensive wiring. The use of optic fibers offers a low-cost alternative to traditional copper-wire harnesses. This paper presents a bidirectional, alignment-tolerant optoelectronic interconnect for automotive applications. The proposed interconnect offers a low manufacturing potential cost because it uses inexpensive alignment tolerant large core plastic fiber for ease of connector alignment. The optoelectronic interface chip uses time-division multiplexing to combine several information sources into a serial data stream that can be easily decoded by a microcontroller. By using a colocated small emitter in the middle of a large detector, the system achieves both bidirectional communication on a single fiber and alignment tolerant capabilities. Results show that this optoelectronic interconnect is a feasible replacement for wire harnesses in automobiles.