Cost-Effective 1.25-Gb/s CMOS Receiver for 50-m Large-Core SI-POF Links

This letter proposes a new analog front end for short-reach high-speed optical communications that compensates the limited bandwidth of 1-mm step-index polymer optical fiber (SI-POF) transmission systems. In particular, the front end has been fabricated using a cost-effective digital 0.18- complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology and fed with only 1 V. The prototype contains a transimpedance amplifier, a continuous-time equalizer, and an output driver. Experimentally, we have obtained 1.25-Gb/s transmission for a simple nonreturn-to-zero modulation in an optical link composed of 50 m of SI-POF and a large area Si PIN photodetector.