ktyszka
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Hi, I do not have much experience with high-frequency electronics and I am looking for some advice on how to drive multiple laser diodes with GHz arbitrary waveforms.
For the purpose of a scientific experiment, I need to illuminate a sample with multiple laser diodes (LD) arranged in a 1D array. These LDs need to be driven with analog signals in such a way that the arbitrary electrical waveform is converted to light intensity emitted by each diode and each diode has a specific intensity in time and these intensities vary with GHz frequency.
In general as high driving frequency, as many LDs, as much optical power as possible is my goal.
I have access to TEC AWG7082C (8GS/s - 3 Ghz, 2 channels). As LDs I wanted to use VCSELs typical for ethernet communication (like HFE6X92-X61-10Gbps-850nm-VCSEL-LC-TOSA-Package-Data-Sheet). I thought I could build a kind of electro-optical serial-to-parallel converter in which I would drive serially connected VCSELs with one channel of AWG. By selecting the lengths of the wires between the VCSELs I could control the driving signal delay. So if I drive 10 VCSELs like that and program an arbitrary waveform with 10 consecutive analog levels I should theoretically get a proper output intensity configuration for every 10th sample. This way I have a kind of electro-optical serial-to-parallel conversion which depends on AWG sampling rate and number of VCSELs used.
My question is if this would work and if it is possible to drive an array of VCSELs with AWG. I can imagine I need a current source for VCSELs (or typical circuit with a resistor?) and some kind of tee-bias (?). Could you advise on how to connect such a setup? Should I use a high-frequency splitter with delays (https://www.minicircuits.com/pdfs/ZN16PD-0563-S+.pdf) instead of serial connections?
An alternative approach would be to do something similar but use only one high-power high-frequency VCSEL and carry out the conversion in the optical domain (by beam splitting and delaying), although I could not find this type of VCSELs.
I have a budget in the range of 2000 USD to upgrade this idea somehow.
Solutions I have considered:
Some kind of FPGA board or DAC with multiple channels to drive VCSELs
Some kind of SFP development board to drive multiple SFP transceivers
Buying some old-school multichannel pulse/pattern generator (if something like that exists)
I will appreciate any suggestions and your opinions. Best regards, Chris
For the purpose of a scientific experiment, I need to illuminate a sample with multiple laser diodes (LD) arranged in a 1D array. These LDs need to be driven with analog signals in such a way that the arbitrary electrical waveform is converted to light intensity emitted by each diode and each diode has a specific intensity in time and these intensities vary with GHz frequency.
In general as high driving frequency, as many LDs, as much optical power as possible is my goal.
I have access to TEC AWG7082C (8GS/s - 3 Ghz, 2 channels). As LDs I wanted to use VCSELs typical for ethernet communication (like HFE6X92-X61-10Gbps-850nm-VCSEL-LC-TOSA-Package-Data-Sheet). I thought I could build a kind of electro-optical serial-to-parallel converter in which I would drive serially connected VCSELs with one channel of AWG. By selecting the lengths of the wires between the VCSELs I could control the driving signal delay. So if I drive 10 VCSELs like that and program an arbitrary waveform with 10 consecutive analog levels I should theoretically get a proper output intensity configuration for every 10th sample. This way I have a kind of electro-optical serial-to-parallel conversion which depends on AWG sampling rate and number of VCSELs used.
My question is if this would work and if it is possible to drive an array of VCSELs with AWG. I can imagine I need a current source for VCSELs (or typical circuit with a resistor?) and some kind of tee-bias (?). Could you advise on how to connect such a setup? Should I use a high-frequency splitter with delays (https://www.minicircuits.com/pdfs/ZN16PD-0563-S+.pdf) instead of serial connections?
An alternative approach would be to do something similar but use only one high-power high-frequency VCSEL and carry out the conversion in the optical domain (by beam splitting and delaying), although I could not find this type of VCSELs.
I have a budget in the range of 2000 USD to upgrade this idea somehow.
Solutions I have considered:
Some kind of FPGA board or DAC with multiple channels to drive VCSELs
Some kind of SFP development board to drive multiple SFP transceivers
Buying some old-school multichannel pulse/pattern generator (if something like that exists)
I will appreciate any suggestions and your opinions. Best regards, Chris