On-chip optical wireless interconnections with plasmonic nanoantennas

Plasmonic nanoantennas integrated with silicon waveguides are a suitable solution for the implementation of on-chip wireless communications at optical frequencies. The use of optical wireless links simplifies on chip network design, mitigating switching and routing issues, while avoiding electro-optical conversion. In this work, we investigate the performance of multiple parallel on-chip optical interconnections by taking into account cross-link interference, which arises when the links reuse the same optical frequency. This analysis combines two approaches: FDTD simulation to evaluate both the radiation diagram of the antennas used in the optical links and the near-field coupling between transmit and receive neighbor antennas, and system-analysis to evaluate interference effects on link error probability. The results obtained will enable us to design the distances among parallel interconnections in order to preserve acceptable bit error probability.