Electronic components for high speed signal processing in fiber optical communication

Progress in the development of electronic components for high speed signal processing in fiber optical communication is reported. For the transmitter, a transistor power stage (200 mA output current, 1 nsec ri time), step recovery diode amplifier (voltage amplification factor 4, 500 psec pulse width), and step recovery diode multiplexer (1 - 3.3 Gbit/sec) were built using thin film technology. The modulation behavior of injection lasers at 250 Mbit/sec was investigated experimentally and theoretically. An improvement in the modulation behavior and in the spectra of injection lasers was shown theoretically possible. For the receiver, and ECL-threefold OR gate (rise and fall times below 350 psec) clock amplifier (12.5 dB gain, 550 MHz bandwidth) were built also with thin film technology. Finally, a demultiplexer with phase locked clock extraction was built.