An 8-A Sub-1ns Pulsed VCSEL Driver IC With Built-In Pulse Monitor and Automatic Peak Current Control for Direct Time-of-Flight Applications

An integrated laser diode driver for multi-junction vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays is presented in this brief. The driver chip, fabricated in 180nm bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) process, working under 12V supply, can pump more than 8A peak current into a triple-junction VCSEL array, producing up to 20.3W optical pulses. Measured optical pulses have tunable widths from 276ps to 2352ps with 120ps/160ps rise/fall time. When emitting 10MHz-frequency 960ps-width optical pulses with peak power ranging from 3.6W to 17.5W, the driver-VCSEL system has over 20% electrical-to-optical power conversion efficiency. The driver can record its output current waveform with a built-in pulse monitor. The peak data from the recorded waveform is used for automatic peak current control.