Monolithically integrated GaAs-based transceiver chips for bidirectional optical data transmission

Abstract

We report on the design, fabrication and test results of monolithically integrated transceiver chips consisting of GaAs metal-semiconductor-metal photodiodes and 850 nm wavelength vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. These chips are well suited for low-cost and compact bidirectional optical interconnection at Gbit/s data rates in mobile systems and industrial or home networks employing large core size multimode fibers.

Single-Fiber Bidirectional Optical Data Links with Monolithic Transceiver Chips

“…In our first approach, several designs of monolithically integrated VCSELs and MSM photodiodes for 200 and 100 µm core diameter MMFs were presented in [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Figure 1 shows a transceiver chip based on an 850 nm VCSEL centered in the MSM PD for efficient coupling to a 100 µm MMF.…”

“…For this reason, MSM photodetectors with 210 µm diameter were employed for 1 Gbit/s half-duplex and 0.5 Gbit/s full-duplex data transmission over a 50 m long butt-coupled 200 µm core diameter semi-graded-index polymer-clad silica (semi-GI PCS) fiber [17]. Since those transceiver chips were capable to transmit 3 Gbit/s in backto-back (BTB) mode [12,13], the maximum data rate was limited by the low bandwidth-distance product (B × L) of 40GHz × m of the semi-GI PCS fiber. With an improved chip design, even 4 Gbit/s BTB data transmission was possible [18].…”