ABSTRACT
Electrical drivers for optical modulation must bridge the gap between electronic digital multiplexing circuits and amplify these digital levels up to voltages of the modulator technology chosen. ™e ampli˜- cation by the driver should provide minimal degradation of the multiplexed signal characteristics, with minimal amplitude or bit transition jitter of the signal applied to the modulator. ™e driver characteristics are aŸected by the topology used in the ampli˜er driver, the integrated circuit (IC) technologies used in the design, the radio frequency (RF) broadband coupling of the design from the electrical multiplexer to the optical modulator, interstage coupling of cascaded ampli˜er stages, and the packaging technologies used for building these solutions. ™e following sections will detail each of the items and explain the practical implementations of these solutions used in the present market.
