Radiation-hard/high-speed parallel optical links

We have designed and fabricated a compact parallel optical engine for transmitting data at 5 Gb/s. The device consists of a 4-channel ASIC driving a VCSEL (Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser) array in an optical package. The ASIC is designed using only core transistors in a 65 nm CMOS process to enhance the radiation-hardness. The ASIC contains an 8-bit DAC to control the bias and modulation currents of the individual channels in the VCSEL array. The performance of the optical engine up at 5 Gb/s is satisfactory.