At OFC 2017, semiconductor developer MaxLinear introduced the MxL9162, a 64Gbaud linear transimpedance amplifier (TIA) designed for next-generation 400G/600G coherent optical transcievers.
The MxL9162 is a dual-channel TIA with a per-channel data rate of 64Gbaud. It features best-in-class radio frequency (RF) system performance including more than 40GHz channel bandwidth, low total harmonic distortion, input referred noise density, power dissipation and channel crosstalk. Thus, it exceeds the performance requirements of next-generation 64Gbaud high-bandwidth micro-intradyne coherent receiver (ICR) designs for long-haul, metro and data centre interconnect applications, the company claims.
An integrated photodetector bias and serial peripheral interface with integrated high-resolution digital to analogue/analogue to digital converter (DAC/ADC) greatly simplifies the peripheral circuit design, reduces module bill-of-material costs and minimises substrate real estate.
Additionally, the integrated equalizer function with programmable gain peaking profile allows receiver sensitivity to be optimised with photodiodes and package designs from a wide range of manufacturers. The MxL9162 also supports the low differential output swings required for the next generation of low-power coherent digital signal processors.