Ultra-wideband microwave amplifiers for digital optical communications

In this paper, the requirements and the design methods of ultra-wideband amplifiers in digital data transmission at gigabit rates using optical links, which are required to externally modulate the laser diode light on the transmit side, and to amplify the detector diode signal of the receiver, are described. A novel amplifier design technique is proposed and compared with the traditional distributed amplifier equivalent using MESFETs, and produces about 10 dB more gain at the expense of only 3 dB lower output power. Typical measured results are presented showing good 'eye-diagram' performance for both 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s optical communication external modulator applications.

[1]  T. Ikegami,et al.  Survey of telecommunications applications of quantum electronics-progress with optical fiber communications , 1992, Proc. IEEE.

[2]  A. Freundorfer,et al.  A 10 Gb/s AlGaAs/GaAs HBT high power fully differential limiting distributed amplifier for III-V Mach-Zehnder modulator , 1996 .

[3]  T. Shibata,et al.  A design technique for a 60 GHz-bandwidth distributed baseband amplifier IC module , 1994 .

[4]  W. Reinert,et al.  Broadband low-power amplifier with high gain and mixer modes using quantum-well GaAs FET technology , 1992 .

[5]  10 Gb/s low-noise transimpedance amplifier for optoelectronic receivers based on InAlAs/InGaAs/InP HEMTs , 1996, Proceedings of EDMO '96.

[6]  T. F. Meister,et al.  20 Gbit/s transimpedance preamplifier and modulator driver in SiGe bipolar technology , 1997 .

[7]  Y. Imai,et al.  Direct-coupled distributed baseband amplifier IC's for 40-Gb/s optical communication , 1996 .

[8]  Christofer Toumazou,et al.  Integrated high frequency low-noise current-mode optical transimpedance preamplifiers: theory and practice , 1995 .

[9]  H. Brouzes,et al.  A 1 to 40 GHz MESFET hybrid distributed amplifier , 1989, IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Digest.

[10]  Y. Imai,et al.  A 16-dB DC-to-50-GHz InAlAs/InGaAs HEMT distributed baseband amplifier using a new loss compensation technique , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 IEEE GaAs IC Symposium.

[11]  B. Jalali,et al.  1 Gbit/s fibre channel CMOS transimpedance amplifier , 1997 .

[12]  Kevin W. Kobayashi,et al.  Extending the bandwidth performance of heterojunction bipolar transistor-based distributed amplifiers , 1996 .

[13]  Y. Imai,et al.  Design and performance of wideband GaAs MMIC's for high-speed optical communication systems , 1992 .

[14]  C. Aitchison,et al.  20 GHz broadband optical receiver using a distributed amplifier and pin photodiode combination with a matched input termination , 1996 .

[15]  Akira Naka,et al.  Optimum parameter guidelines for 10 Gbit/s, multi-megametre transmission systems considering the nonlinear effect , 1993 .