Digital communications using 890-nm surface-emitting light-emitting diodes above 1 Gbit/s

Summary form only given. Optical fiber data links rely on both semiconductor light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and diode lasers as sources. The economy, simplicity, and high reliability of the LED make it an interesting choice for short-distance, moderate-speed interconnects involving applications such as computer peripherals for local area networks, home networks and Gbit ethernet. Commercial short-wavelength LED based systems currently support data rates up to 155 Mbit/s with electrical bandwidths below 100 MHz. We recently reported high-efficiency LEDs with frequency response in excess of 1 GHz. We believe we describe the first high-speed digital communication measurements using these LEDs. Our results demonstrate error-free modulation well above 1 Gbit/s, for the first time to our knowledge for LEDs.