Patent ID: 6970649

Claim:
An arrangement for providing free space optical interconnects between multiple circuit cards in a computer system or networking device, comprising: the computer system or networking device comprising a plurality of circuit cards which are plugged into a common electrical backplane; at least one of the plurality of circuit cards comprising a transmitter circuit card having at least one laser transmitter element producing a laser output signal and a controller to use a dither signal to modulate the wavelength of the laser output signal; at least one of the plurality of circuit cards comprising a receiver circuit card having at least one receiver element, to establish at least one optical interconnect between the transmitter and receiver circuit cards; a dither wavelength locked feedback loop for dynamically adjusting the optical interconnect to maintain the wavelength of the optical interconnect nominally centered at a desired wavelength, wherein a portion of the receiver electrical output signal is fed back across the common electrical backplane to the transmitter element to form a wavelength-locked feedback loop which is used to tune the wavelength of the optical interconnect, such that only those receiver elements which are tuned or wavelength-locked to the transmitter element wavelength receive the desired optical signal in a wavelength division multiple access (WDMA) system; and wherein the feedback loop mixes the feedback signal with the dither signal to produce a product signal, and uses said product signal to maintain the wavelength of the optical interconnect at the desired wavelength.