Calumet wins U.S. Navy Naval Air Warfare Center - Aircraft Division SBIR to research the use of embedded single-mode waveguides for data processing

Posted by Courtney E. Howard

CALUMET, Mich., 22 Oct. 2011. Calumet Electronics Corp. (Calumet), a manufacturer of printed circuit boards, won from the Naval Air Warfare Center - Aircraft Division a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract award valued at roughly $80,000. The objective of the Phase I award is to conduct research under SBIR Topic N112-122, “Embedded Single Mode Wave Guides for High Data Rate Processing.”

“Our Optical Interconnect Team has produced electro-optical printed circuit boards (EOPCB) and assemblies (EOPCBA) on rigid substrates using polymer waveguides and surface-mounted light turning devices in our Optical Interconnect Research Lab (OIRL),” says Stephen J. Marshall, sponsored programs manager of Calumet.

“New, more powerful generations of digital signal processing (DSP) chips with parallel-processing capabilities continue to meet escalating demand for the increased computing power and speed required in avionic electrical warfare (EW) and signal intelligence (SIGINT) applications,” Marshall says. “Electrical transmission interconnect traces have already begun to limit overall capabilities and create multiple signal routing difficulties because of bandwidth limitations and high-bandwidth design requirements. Optical waveguides, with their inherently large transmission bandwidth capabilities, can be utilized to alleviate this digital data transmission bottleneck and overcome bandwidth limitations.”