Patent ID: 8364042

Claim:
An optical interconnection arrangement for transmitting high speed data signals, the arrangement comprising: a transmitting component associated with a first processing node for converting an electrical high speed data signal into an optical data signal; an optical transmission channel coupled to the output of the transmitting component; and a receiving component associated with a second processing node and coupled to the output of the optical transmitting channel for receiving the optical data signal and re-converting the received optical data signal into the original electrical high speed data signal, wherein the transmitting component comprises: a phase alignment element responsive to a plurality of N of parallel data signals and an electrical clock signal to create as an output a plurality of parallel, phase-aligned data signals; a first optical modulator responsive to the plurality of N parallel phase-aligned data signals and a continuous wave (CW) optical signal to create a pulse amplitude modulated (PAM) optical data signal representative of the plurality of N parallel phase-aligned data signals; and a second optical modulator responsive to the electrical clock signal and a CW optical signal to create an optical clock output signal; and the receiving component comprises: a first optical/electrical (O/E) conversion device responsive to the received PAM optical data signal to create an electronic version thereof; a second O/E conversion device response to the received optical clock signal to create an electronic version thereof; and an A/D converter responsive to the outputs of the first and second O/E conversion devices to recover the original plurality of N parallel data signals therefrom.