Applied Optoelectronics Inc (AOI) of Sugar Land, TX, USA – a manufacturer of optical components, modules and equipment for fiber access networks in the Internet data-center, cable TV broadband, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and telecom markets – has announced the development of 200Gbps PIN photodiode (PD) array chips for high-speed optical receivers.
The new 4x50Gbps indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) PAM4 (4-level pulse amplitude modulation) PIN photodiode array is based on AOI’s 4x25Gbps PIN photodiode array technology and is specifically designed for the PAM4 receivers used in 200G and 400G data-center transceiver modules.
The PIN photodiode array optimizes the aperture size and reduces the parasitic capacitance of the photodiode to achieve a high modulation bandwidth of 25GHz and high linearity suitable for PAM4 signal detection.
Typical receiver sensitivity tested with AOI’s 50Gbps PAM4 directly modulated laser (DML) is -12dBm at a forward-error correction (FEC) KP4 bit-error rate (BER) threshold of 2E-4. Additionally, alongside the 1x4 array, the 50Gbps singlet photodiode can be used in 50Gbps transceivers for 5G wireless and fiber-to-the-home applications.
“With in-house manufacturing for both our 50Gbps PAM4 PIN photodiode array and 50Gbps PAM4 DML or electro-absorption modulated laser (EML), AOI now controls the two key optical components required to produce 200G and 400G transceivers based on 50Gbps per lambda technology,” says vice president of R&D Dr Jun Zheng. “This vertical integration will improve the time to market for our 200Gbps DR4/FR4/LR4 and 400Gbps FR8/LR8 transceivers.”
