Abstract

This paper presents the design of a 5 Gb/s laser-driver GaAs IC employing a novel high-speed, low-power, 50 ? impedance matched output driver. Eye-diagrams with good eye openings, clean wave forms with insignificant ringing and output reflection coefficients of less than -8 dB for frequencies up to 10 GHz are demonstrated over the full 10-40 mA output current tuning range. An optical-fibre transmission experiment using an electro-optic modulator driven by the presented laser-driver has been conducted showing an optical extinction ratio of 11.4 dB.