Single-Chip Receiver for 1.25 Gb/s Over 50-m SI-POF

This letter presents a single chip receiver for short-reach high-speed applications through low-cost plastic optical fiber. It compensates the limited bandwidth caused by the fiber and the external photodiode. The prototype contains a transimpedance amplifier, a continuous-time adaptive equalizer, a limiting amplifier, and a clock and data recovery circuit. 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 step-index polymer optical fiber and a large area Si p-i-n photodetector. It achieves a power under 110 mW at only 1 V of supply voltage.