Integrated Circuit Solutions for High Datarate Polymer Fiber Communication

Licentiate thesis, 2021

Most societies today are dependent on an Internet connection. It has to be reliable in any condition, energy efficient, but most importantly fast. High data rate communication is urgently needed, not only to connect one part of the world to the other, but also for short range applications to help us get through the day. Communication within an autonomous car, to get us from point A to point B, streaming entertainment at a Friday night, or parts of a production chain to help out at a factory.
The transmitters and receivers are key components to transfer the data to make these kind of applications possible. Adjustments to what is available and possible is what challenges the progress. Fundamental limitations comes from the material properties and available energy in comparison to the noise around us. Dealing with bandwidth limitations is somewhat man-made, but the interference of different signals is completely real.
Looking around for opportunities in this world leads you to look for free bandwidths. The millimeterwave-band (30-300 GHz) offers available bandwidth as well as other benefits. In this work, different circuit solutions enabling high data rate communication is proposed and presented. Different technologies are used, like state of the art processes and commercial processes.
Wirebound communication through polymer microwave fiber (PMF) using energy efficient RF-DAC based modulators and power detectors (PDs) is a cheap and robust solution. In this work we explore the opportunities of short range, ultra high data rate, PMF bound communication, which is found to support 30 Gbps error free (BER<10^-12) data.