Abstract

High speed integrated circuits (ICs) have played a key role in the phenomenal growth of lightwave system capacities because they are essential to interface with the high speed light sources and photodetectors at both ends of a fiber span.¹ Since these electronic interfaces in general involve complex, low noise linear and nonlinear elements for amplification, threshold detection, and timing extraction, high speed electronic circuits have been among the bottlenecks in the realization of practical multi-Gbit/s systems. We discuss the system requirements and design criteria of key components in multi-Gbit/s lightwave communication systems. These components include the laser transmitter, optical front end receiver, main amplifier, decision and retiming circuits, as well as the multiplexers in synchronized-digital-hierarchy networks.

© 1990 Optical Society of America