Design and implementation of high-speed transmitters and receivers for optical interconnects in CMOS technology

Optoelectronic very-large scale integrated (OE-VLSI) technology provides for the integration of photonic devices, such as the laser-diode and the photodiode, with silicon VLSI electronics. This technology is capable of providing high bandwidth and high-density optical input/output (I/O) to silicon VLSI chips, with an aggregate data bit rate of over a Terabit per second. The development of the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and the high-speed p-i-n photodiode has made this technology possible. Optical transmitter and receiver circuits are responsible for the interfacing between the photonic devices and the silicon VLSI electronics. This thesis presents designs of optical transmitter and receiver circuits implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology. These circuits are designed to achieve minimum power consumption and circuit area, and maximum high-speed performance. Different circuit topologies are studied and implemented. Three different topologies of laser drivers for transmitter and two different preamplifiers for receivers are studied and presented in this thesis.