VCSELs in optical networking

Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) are now essentially the only source used in short distance high bit rate data communications over multimode optical fiber. First commercially realized in 1996 by Honeywell, the primary application has been single channel links operating Ethernet or Fibre Channel protocols in the LAN and SAN environments. Today, the total bandwidth throughput is being raised to more than 10Gbps per channel, with the potential of several channel operation to yield more than 100Gbps. 850nm VCSELs are beginning to emerge in relatively new application arenas and wavelengths. This paper describes the market readiness for VCSELS in a wide variety of optical networking applications.