Manufacturing test of fibre channel communications cards and optical subassemblies

Fiber optic communications is an established technology in the telecommunications industry. In the computer industry it is an emerging technology due to its high bandwidth and its ability to communicate at high speeds over distances that far exceed what is possible using wire cable. In the last six years, fiber optic technology for Fibre Channel (FC) applications has advanced from 266 Mb/sec to 1063 Mb/sec. This paper describes the testing of FC cards and the manufacture of low cost plastic optical subassemblies (OSAs). Future trends in fiber optic communications cards are also discussed.