3.125 Gbit/s CMOS transceiver for duobinary modulation over 50-m SI-POF channels

This Letter presents a novel CMOS transceiver for short-reach multigigabit communication over step-index plastic optical fibre (SI-POF), a very interesting transmission medium for industrial and home-end applications due to its low cost, ease of handling and inherent immunity to electromagnetic interference. The transceiver uses amplitude duobinary modulation, which is added to continuous-time equalisation. For that purpose, a duobinary precoder and a duobinary decoder have been fabricated in a standard 0.18-µm CMOS technology, consuming only 28.4 mW. The system enables a 50-m SI-POF channel bandlimited to 100 MHz to operate at a data bit rate of 3.125 Gbit/s.