PAM-4 signaling over VCSELs using 0.13 μm CMOS

We present results for VCSEL based links operating PAM-4 signaling using a commercial 0.13μm CMOS technology. We perform a complete link analysis of the Bit Error Rate, Q factor, random and deterministic jitter by measuring waterfall curves versus margins in time and amplitude We demonstrate that VCSEL based PAM -4 can match or even improve performance over binary signaling under conditions of bandwidth limited 100meter multi-mode optical link at 5Gbps. We present the first sensitivity measurements for optical PAM-4 and compare it with binary signaling.