Numerical Study and Experimental Validation of the Thermal Performance for a Parallel Channel Optical Module

To meet the insatiable demand for data bandwidth in VSR (very short reach up to 300m) applications including server and routers, parallel optical interconnection offers a promising solution in terms of performance and cost effectiveness. A 12-channel pluggable paralle optical transmitter module has been developed to achieve a data rate of 2.5 Gb/s per channel. To maintain the robustness of the optical signal integrity under different environmental conditions, the thermal management is crucial. In this paper the thermal performance evaluation of the optical module was carried out through both numerical simulation and experimental verification. The optical module mainly consists of a VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser) array, a driver IC and a heat sink. Three types of heat sinks were integrated into the transmitter module separately. The thermal environments used for this evaluation include the normal and high ambient temperature, and both still-air and forced-air conditions. The ambient temperature and the wind speed were controlled by using a Wind Tunnel. The simulation was performed by using a CFD (computational fluid dynamics) program. In all the three modules, the simulation and experimental results of the junction temperature have shown good agreements. For Module 1 under the high ambient temperature, a forced-air condition was required to keep the junction temperature below 70°C. For Module 2 and Module 3, the junction temperature can be controlled below 70°C even under the high ambient temperature without using a fan.