High-Speed 1550 nm VCSEL Data Transmission Link Employing 25 GBd 4-PAM Modulation and Hard Decision Forward Error Correction

Current short-range optical interconnects capacity is moving from 100 to 400 Gb/s and beyond. Direct modulation of several laser sources is used to minimize bandwidth limitations of current optical and electrical components. This total capacity is provided either by wavelength division multiplexing or parallel optics; it is important to investigate on the ultimate transmission capabilities of each laser source to facilitate current capacity standards and allow for future demands. High-speed four-level pulse amplitude modulation at 25 GBd of a 1.5 mu m vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is presented in this paper. The 20 GHz 3 dB-bandwidth laser is, at the time of submission, the largest bandwidth of a 1.5 m VCSEL ever reported. Forward error correction (FEC) is implemented to achieve transmission over 100 m virtually error free after FEC decoding. Line rate of 100 Gb/s is achieved by emulation polarization multiplexing using 50Gb/s signal obtained from a single VCSEL.