A Laser Diode Driver with Hyperbolic Time Dependent Current in 0.35µm BiCMOS Technology

This paper describes the design of a high speed semiconductor laser diode driver for driving 0.5 to 2mW diodes at full optical power modulation up to 50MHz for use in a quantum random number generator. The output current is in a hyperbolic time-dependent shape in order to convert the exponential distribution of the photon arrival time to a uniform distribution function. The circuit is capable of delivering up to 10mA to a VCSEL laser load with a period time of 20ns.