A 2.5 Gb/s low-power CMOS optoelectronic transceiver for optical communications

By using TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS 1P6M technology, we developed an optoelectronic transceiver that can operate at 2.5 Gb/s for optical communications. To achieve a high-speed operation, the proposed optical receiver indirectly senses the photo current to generate an output voltage that is split into two signals, one of which go through a delay element, for an operational amplifier to yield an enlarged output signal without using the DC bias voltage. On the other hand, with consideration of different light sources, the laser diode driver with programmable driving currents is designed, and thus we can easily adjust the driving currents to meet various laser diodes and to overcome distortion effects from laser diode packaging. Due to circuit simplification and CMOS technology, the proposed transceiver can be widely used in low-cost and low-power chip-to-chip interconnection and fiber communication systems