Bidirectional Optical Interconnection at Gb/s Data Rates With Monolithically Integrated VCSEL-MSM Transceiver Chips

We present the operation characteristics of 850-nm wavelength GaAs-based monolithically integrated transceiver chips designed for low-cost short-distance bidirectional optical data transmission over a butt-coupled 200-mum core diameter polymer-clad silica fiber. The chips containing a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser and a large-area metal-semiconductor-metal photodiode can well handle data rates of 2.5Gb/s in back-to-back mode and 0.5 Gb/s for 10-m fiber length