Salt Fog Resistant Optical Modules For Mil/Aero

Data centers drive volume use for modern optical transceivers. These have favorable conditions for the optics, with low humidity and tightly controlled temperatures, which in turn has enabled a low-cost design approach for the subcomponents used in modern devices.

The Mil/Aero market has very different environmental requirements with aggressive conditions such as sand/dust, salt fog, and even continuous operation in 100% humidity. These conditions have historically led to the use of robust, but expensive hermetic seal designs to protect critical optical components and surfaces from these extreme conditions.

Taking a low-cost, high-volume design and making it robust against these severe environmental requirements results in a quicker time-to-market and a lower-cost customer solution that can still guarantee operation after and during exposure.

Samtec has a long history of modifying commercial products to meet the robust demands of Mil/Aero applications. We recently introduced a line of embedded optical modules that address the industry’s most stringent requirements.

These new optical modules are based on our high volume FireFly™ optical engine and are coated with Parylene. The resulting optical engine meets Mil Standard 810, Method 509.7, which is one of the most severe specifications for salt fog environments while offering aggressive pricing.

Parylene is fungal-resistant and protects against extreme humidity. Samtec has long been an innovator in providing solutions for immersion cooling applications, and the same sealing methods used for immersion cooling are part of the solution for salt fog mitigation.

FireFly is rated up to 28 Gbps per lane, with a miniature footprint that allows the industry’s highest bandwidth per square inch of PCB space. Being a mid-board optic, it can be placed close to the PHY, resulting in better signal integrity and lower power consumption. This gives FireFly one of the lowest SWAP on the market.

Samtec has an extensive offering of COTS optical products for the Mil/Aero industry. Our huge volume of commercial shipments provides consistent and reliable manufacturing, documentation, and traceability. Samtec also offers a wide variety of design options, both within a product line as well across our whole portfolio.

For dense 3U and 6U VMX applications, or anywhere where you need to route high bandwidth reliably in a small area, the FireFly form factor is one of the smallest and most dense optical choices on the market.

And if you’ve stayed with me this far, here’s a list of related blogs that might be of interest to you:

• Severe Environment Testing for Connectors
• An Overview Of Severe Environment Testing
• A Deep Dive into Severe Environment Testing
• A Deep Dive into Severe Environment Testing (Part II)
• What is Outgassing and How is it Tested?
• Connector Thermal Cycle Qualification For Military and Avionic Environments
• Samtec, COTS, and Mil/Aero
• Samtec Technical Experts to Present at Embedded Tech Trends

For more information on our harsh environmental optical engines, contact the Samtec optical group at [email protected].  Here’s a link for more information about FireFly.