High-speed CMOS optical communication using silicon light emitters

Marius E. Goosen; Petrus J. Venter; Monuko du Plessis; Ilse J. Nell; Alfons W. Bogalecki; Pieter Rademeyer

doi:10.1117/12.875112

17 January 2011 High-speed CMOS optical communication using silicon light emitters

Marius E. Goosen, Petrus J. Venter, Monuko du Plessis, Ilse J. Nell, Alfons W. Bogalecki, Pieter Rademeyer

Proceedings Volume 7944, Optoelectronic Interconnects and Component Integration XI; 79440X (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.875112
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2011, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

The idea of moving CMOS into the mainstream optical domain remains an attractive one. In this paper we discuss our recent advances towards a complete silicon optical communication solution. We prove that transmission of baseband data at multiples of megabits per second rates are possible using improved silicon light sources in a completely native standard CMOS process with no post processing. The CMOS die is aligned to a fiber end and the light sources are directly modulated. An optical signal is generated and transmitted to a silicon Avalanche Photodiode (APD) module, received and recovered. Signal detectability is proven through eye diagram measurements. The results show an improvement of more than tenfold over our previous results, also demonstrating the fastest optical communication from standard CMOS light sources. This paper presents an all silicon optical data link capable of 2 Mb/s at a bit error rate of 10^-10, or alternatively 1 Mb/s at a bit error rate of 10^-14. As the devices are not operating at their intrinsic switching speed limit, we believe that even higher transmission rates are possible with complete integration of all components in CMOS.

Citation Download Citation

Marius E. Goosen, Petrus J. Venter, Monuko du Plessis, Ilse J. Nell, Alfons W. Bogalecki, and Pieter Rademeyer "High-speed CMOS optical communication using silicon light emitters", Proc. SPIE 7944, Optoelectronic Interconnects and Component Integration XI, 79440X (17 January 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.875112

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