Efficient pulse amplitude modulation integrated circuit architecture and partition

摘要

A transmitter is disclosed as being configured to encode optical signals in accordance with a multi-level coding scheme. The transmitter includes an Integrated Circuit architecture and partition that relaxes the bandwidth and linearity constraints of a gearbox-to-laser driver interface. In the proposed architecture, the gearbox Integrated Circuit aligns two or more digital data streams and transmits the aligned two or more data streams to the laser driver via separate signals.

主权项

1. A transmitter, comprising:
a gearbox Integrated Circuit (IC) configured to receive two or more separate digital signals and align a phase of the two or more separate digital signals with one another; and a laser driver IC comprising a light source and a laser driver and level control module configured to control operation of the light source by converting the two or more separate digital signals received from the gearbox IC into a single multi-level-coded signal and then driving the light source with the single multi-level-coded signal, wherein the multi-level-coded signal comprises a Pulse Amplitude Modulated N-level (PAM-N) signal and wherein the two or more separate digital signals comprise two or more Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) signals.