Asymmetric optical bus couplers with Aerosol Jet printed polymer waveguides

According to current roadmaps, optical communication will be the future backbone for infotainment applications in the automotive and aviation sector as well as for applications in Industry 4.0. However, there is a lack of interruption-free coupling technologies for optical bus systems with multimode waveguides. The goal of the presented work is the development of an asymmetric optical bus coupler (AOBC), which enables for a coupling of several devices/modules to one single bus waveguide without interrupting the two coupling partners. With the presented coupling approach we achieve different coupling efficiencies depending on the coupling direction. This is of special interest for bus systems where all of the optical power should be coupled from the module into the bus but where the coupling efficiency from the bus to the module should be moderate to keep enough power in the bus waveguide for further coupling. By the use of Aerosol Jet printed polymer waveguides a flexible coupler design can be realized.