Electrical package impact on VCSEL-based optical interconnects

A new CAD tool fREEDA(R) based on state variable approach and universal error concept is presented for modelling and simulating systems where physical domains such as electrical, thermal, and optical interact with each other. A single implementation of device equations in fREEDA(R) can be used with different analysis types such as transient and harmonic balance, etc. To demonstrate the multi-physics capabilities of fREEDA(R), we present a study of the impact of electrical packages on the source module performance in multi-gigabit per second vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL)-based optical interconnects. The effect of various operating conditions such as bias/drive level and driver configuration are studied. We consider electrical packages such as printed wire board, thin-film and flip-chip in our study. A comparison of VCSELs with stripe lasers is also presented. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.