Encoding circuits for low power optical on-chip communications

The increased demands of high data-rate communications could be satisfied by optical semiconductor elements. Actually, these devices represent an important role in the total energy budget available for the chip. This work presents a low-power encoding technique which optimizes the statistical distribution so as to reduce the energy dissipated in optical communications. We evaluated the encoding circuits referring to 180 nm, 130 nm and 90 nm CMOS technologies. Our results show an up to 12% electrical current reduction in the on-chip light emitter.