1550 nm VCSEL-based 0.48 Tb/s transmission scheme employing PAM-4 and WDM for active optical cables

With this paper we investigate the system-level performance of VCSELs, parameterized with true experimental LI-VI data and dynamic characteristics of state-of-the-art VCSELs with 3 dB modulation bandwidth at 15 GHz, and propose their deployment as high-speed multi-level optical sources in a mid-range active optical cable (AOC) model for performance prediction of a rack-to-rack interconnection. The AOC architecture combines a 6-element 1550 nm VCSEL array, each directly modulated with 40 Gbaud PAM-4 data, with a wavelength division multiplexer (WDM), in order to implement a parallel link with aggregate traffic of 0.48 Tb/s. Transmission reach exceeded 300 m by deploying a two-tap feed forward equalizer filter at the electrical VCSEL driver. Bit Error Rate (BER) measurements and analysis were carried out in MATLAB. In practice, the thermal behavior and basic operational characteristics of the VCSELs fabricated by the Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) were used to study the thermal performance and operational range of the complete AOC model. The VCSELs were initially operated at 20 degrees C and BER measurements showed power penalties of 1.7 dB and 3.5 dB at 300 m and 500 m of transmission distance respectively for all 6 data channels. System performance was also investigated for elevated operating temperatures of the VCSEL module and the additional system degradation and BER penalties introduced by operation at 50 degrees C and 65 degrees C were also investigated for transmission distances of 300 m and 500 m.