Electronic considerations for OEICs

Abstract

Optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs) from the viewpoint of IC design due to the combination of analog and digital circuits on the same chip substrate are addressed. The problems presented by the mixed analog/digital design aspects of receiver OEICs are considered. A complex receiver OEIC for a fiber-optic link may contain a photodetector, a high gain receiver circuit, clock recovery and data retiming circuits, data demultiplexing and synchronization circuits all on the same chip substrate. This mixes low-level analog signals with large amounts of noisy digital logic, a situation not commonly encountered in standard IC design, and it presents the OEIC designer with unique circuit challenges. It is shown that high-performance, highly integrated OEICs can be designed, but only when the digital drivers, packaging, and chip layout are carefully optimized to eliminate crosstalk.