I have a system with many daisy changed sensors on PCBs that require very low noise and I’m looking to avoid wires that that could radiate/couple noise by communicating between boards optically. The setup I have now uses wires but is too noisy. I have 10 wires which includes power and signals and I'm looking to serialize as much of the data as possible and send it optically.
10 total signals:
1) Power:
+12V, -12V, GND
2) Signals:
7 different signals (2 of which are clocks, both around 16 MHz), total data rate is under 1 MB
Questions:
1) Assume I will need to use wires for power?
2) Do I need a dedicated optical connections for the clocks or can those be included in the same optical cable as the other signals?
3) Is there a single chip that can serialize my 7 signals and send them all optically or do I need to find one chip that does the serialization and one chip that sends signals optically?
4) Are the optical Rx and optical Tx chips typically different chips dedicated to Rx or Tx or are they often the same chip that can do both?
5) Suggestions on chips or where to start?
