85-fJ Dissipated Energy Per Bit at 30 Gb/s Across 500-m Multimode Fiber Using 850-nm VCSELs

We present important progress in energy efficiency for oxide-confined 850-nm single mode and quasi single mode vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) suitable for optical interconnects. Error-free operation at 30 Gb/s across 500 m of multimode optical fiber is achieved with 85 fJ of dissipated energy per bit. At 25 Gb/s, the maximum multimode fiber distance is 1000 m. These VCSELs are presently the most energy efficient directly modulated light-sources for data transmission across multimode optical fiber distances up to 1 km.