| Intravehicle communications has been increasing at a rapid pace in recent years. The advent of multimedia applications, global positioning systems and increased use of safety devices and sensors has fueled network traffic within vehicular networks. Military vehicles have had similar advances as well. The bandwidth necessary to provide adequate communication between systems is slowly approaching the limit of traditional copper based networks. Optical fiber is finding its way into these networks for a variety of reasons including large bandwidth, low weight and small volume. Along with these advantages optical fiber allows the possibility to directly integrate fiber into the structure of a vehicle, thus offering an automated process for running network cabling. Automating this process eliminates a large manufacturing cost associated with running cable manually throughout the vehicle. Also, for military applications it can add an extra layer of protection to the network for increased reliability. Along with communications applications, the integration of optical fiber into structural components allows for the possibility of embedding sensor networks within structures. The major hurdle in achieving integration is the communication from outside to inside the panel. To overcome this, various methods of optical data porting to embedded optical fibers were designed, fabricated and tested. Active methods, both electrical and photonic in nature, were explored as well as using external and self-powering techniques. In the end a passive method of integrating a mirror into the fibers themselves was determined to provide the most advantageous approach. The application of this approach towards off chip optical interconnects was also explored as it was noticed that the mirror integration technique provided for a low-cost process for parallel optical interconnects between chips on a PCB. |
