News

27 September 2010

 

VI Systems gives update on 25/40G VCSEL technology at ECOC 2010

At last week’s European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) 2010 in Turin, Italy (24–27 September), VI Systems GmbH of Berlin, Germany (a fabless spin-off of the Technical University of Berlin and the A. F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St Petersburg, Russia that provides laser and photo-detector chips and modules) presented an update on its 25Gb/s and 40Gb/s vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) device technology and packaging results.

Chief technology officer Dr James Lott presented the performance characteristics of high-speed VCSELs operating with extreme temperature stability throughout the linear output power versus current region, demonstrating that high-speed VCSELs are ready for product insertion in short-range optical communication systems.

VI Systems developed the VCSEL products at a wavelength of 850nm along with a range of very fast integrated circuits based on silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS (bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) technology. The firm uses a patent-pending micro-assembly platform for integrating the opto-electrical components and for alignment to a standard high-performance multi-mode glass-based fiber. The low-cost design enables mass deployment of such optical interconnects for high-bandwidth data communications, says the firm.  

The work on such ultra-high-speed optoelectronic and electrical components is expected to lead to new standards in optical communication systems in the next two years.

Targeted applications include short-reach and very-short-reach optical receivers, transmitters and transceiver modules used in optical communication networks as well as chip-to-chip optical interconnects used in high-performance computing. Future serial standards for data rates of more than 14Gb/s are currently developed or on the roadmap within the Common Electrical Standard (CEI-25/28Gb/s), Fiber Channel 16Gb/s and 32Gb/s, and IEEE Ethernet 40/100Gb/s, Infiniband EDR (26Gb/s per lane), Intel Light Peak up to 100Gb/s as well as in a number of customer-specific applications.

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