Design and fabrication of low-power 1-Gb/s OEIC receivers

In the implementation of optical data links, issues of power consumption, bandwidth and sensitivity have to be addressed in the design of optoelectronic components. This is especially important in high density parallel applications where large amount of heat can cause thermal management problem and performance degradation. We present low-power, low-cost, short wavelength (850 nm) GaAs MSM/MESFET (Metal-Semiconductor-Metal / Metal Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) monolithic OptoElectronic Integrated Circuit (OEIC) receiver arrays which were designed, fabricated, and tested at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Four-channel OEIC receiver arrays with a BER of less than 10^-9 have been measured at 1 Gb/s with a -16 dBm 2⁷-1 Pseudo-Random Bit Sequence (PRBS) input optical signal. The sensitivity was -20 dBm (BER = 10^-9. The development of a lower power version by the Vitesse/MOSIS 0.6 μm E/D-MESFET technology is also presented. Four channel OEIC receivers and several single channel OEIC receivers were developed in the Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation HGaAsIII process by the UIUC. The designs were completed at the UIUC and submitted to MOSIS for fabrication in the HGaAsIII process. Good results have been obtained. The single stage amplifier configuration's average measured performance parameters are: 52.5 dB-Ω gain, 1.4 GHz bandwidth, 76 mW DC power consumption, and 127 V/W responsivity (calculated). The two stage amplifier configuration's average measured performance parameters are: 81.5 dB-Ω gain, 825 MHz bandwidth, 150 mW DC power consumption (estimated), and 3.6 kV/W responsivity (calculated). The three stage amplifier configuration's average estimated performance parameters are: 111 dB-Ω gain, 485 MHz bandwidth, 170 mW DC power consumption, and 106 kV/W responsivity. The four stage amplifier amplifier's average estimated performance parameters are: 139 dB-Ω gain, 285 MHz bandwidth, 190 mW power consumption, and 1.5 MV/W.