CMOS drive circuit for opto-electronic readout of image sensors

The author describes a CMOS circuit designed to provide DC and low-frequency pulsed drive current for semiconductor vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers under development at the US Army Research Laboratory. The circuit is the unit cell of an 8/spl times/8 element array that has been interfaced with a matched laser array. The author qualitatively discusses unit cell operation, provides circuit equations from his DC analysis, and shows experimental results.