Analog fiber-optic link technology

Analog photonic components can be used to overcome the electronic bandwidth limitations in backplane, intra-board, and intra-chip applications. The components of an analog optical link are shown. In order for analog photonic components to be practical and appropriate for optical interconnects, methods have been developed to improve the gain, noise figure, and spurious free dynamic range, the figures of merit of a photonic link is defined. Understanding the link design tradeoffs and the performance of the individual components allows the design engineer to develop a photonic system with optimal performance. The state-of-the-art photonic link performance is demonstrated. During this presentation approaches to improve link performance will be reviewed.