VSR5 optical transmission system and 12 × 10 Gbps VCSEL driver array design

This paper introduces VSR (Very Short Reach) parallel optical interconnection in OC-768 applications, which is compliant with OIF (Optical Internetworking Forum) OIF-SFI5-01.0 and VSR5-01.0 agreements. A point to point experimental parallel transmission system is set up to convert 16 × 2.5 Gbps electrical signals to 12 × 3.318 Gbps optical signals, and vice versa. An OC-768 framer dichotomy search algorithm logic has been implemented in an converter IC, which greatly boosts up working speed and saves logic resources. In addition, a 12 × 10 Gbps VCSEL common cathode driver array has been fabricated by 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Tested by an OC-768 tester, a system bit error rate (BER) of lower than 1 × 10−12 has been obtained.