We manufacture and compare parallel optical transceiver and receiver assemblies on test boards for parallel data transmission over multimode fiber using single mode (SM) and multimode (MM) vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays. VCSELs, GaAs PIN photodetector arrays, commercially-available 12 channel VCSEL driver arrays and 12 channel limiting amplifier arrays were assembled into multi-channel transceiver and receiver assemblies on testboards designed to operate up to 16 channels and coupled to multimode fiber ribbon through industrial connectors. MM VCSEL arrays easily allow 25 Gb/s error-free data transmission over 100m of OM4 fiber with only a minor penalty in the sensitivity (0.5 dB). As opposite increasing the distance to 150-200 m causes a strong increase in the noise level making the error free transmission at 200 m impossible. Using of single mode SM VCSEL arrays allows error-free 25 Gbit/s NRZ PRBS 2¹⁵-1 transmission over 1 km distances over OM4 fiber and above 600 m over OM3 fiber. In a different set of experiments PAM4 transmission up to 50 Gbit/s using SM VCSEL arrays is studied.

Date Published: 9 March 2015
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9390, Next-Generation Optical Networks for Data Centers and Short-Reach Links II, 93900C (9 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2080882

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9390:
Next-Generation Optical Networks for Data Centers and Short-Reach Links II
Atul K. Srivastava, Editor(s)