Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) for Advanced Cryocooled Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) Sensors

STTR topic DON27TZ02-NV001 (U.S. Department of Defense – Navy), Phase I and II. Open to U.S. small businesses; STTR projects partner with a U.S. research institution. Opens: December 2, 2026. Closes: January 6, 2027. Current Department of the Navy (DON) platforms are generating unprecedented volumes of data via advanced radar, SIGINT, and high-resolution imaging sensors. Processing of this data at the tactical edge requires extreme bandwidth but can consume excessive powers, creating significant thermal and signal integrity bottlenecks [Ref 1]. Specifically, for advanced EO/IR sensors that operate in cryocooled temperatures (e.g., 70-140K), the excessive power required to electrically read out the data, i.e., transmit from cold space and receive in warm space, presents a challenging limitation on the size, weight, and power (SWaP) of an integrated dewar cooler assembly. Fiber optics and photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are key optical readout technologies that can offer extreme bandwidth, low power consumption, and mature fabrication but require integrated packaging solutions for next generation DON systems [Ref 2]. CPO offers an integrated solution that considers both optical and electrical elements in EO/IR sensor design, optimizing performance, reliability, and manufacturability. CPO brings the optical transceiver components directly into the same package as the readout integrated circuit (ROIC). This minimizes the electrical channel length or completely eliminates it with photonic interconnects, fundamentally lowering power consumption (energy per bit) and enabling massive bandwidth scaling [Refs 1-4]. To date, commercial CPO solutions are primarily designed for room temperature, climate-controlled hyperscale AI data centers. This STTR topic seeks to adapt and innovate current CPO technologies for the stringent Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C) and packaging (cryogenically cooled) constraints of advanced Navy EO/IR sensing platforms. The focus of…