A 24 mW 2.5 Gb/s VCSEL driver in 0.18 um CMOS

In this paper, the design and testing of a 2.5 Gb/s VCSEL driver for short-to-medium reach optical interconnects is outlined. With the ever increasing processing capacity of digital systems, electrical interconnects linking CMOS chips have become the limiting performance factor. Optical interconnects have been proposed as a promising alternative to increase interconnect capacity. Although vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) are well suited for such an application, high-speed VCSEL drivers reported in the literature generally consume a significant amount of power.