A Versatile Link for High-Speed, Radiation Resistant Optical Transmission in LHC Upgrades

The Versatile Link project is developing a general purpose physical layer optical link with high bandwidth, radiation resistance and magnetic-field tolerance that meets the requirements of LHC upgrade experiments. This paper presents recent work on system specifications, front-end transceiver prototypes, passive components studies and commercial back-end transceiver evaluations. System optical power budgets are specified for single mode (1310nm) and multi-mode (850nm) links, with a target data rate of 4.8 Gbps and a transmission length of 150 meters. Noise and interference penalties are simulated using the 10GbE link model and verified by bit error ratio measurement on reference links. The power margin is particularly constrained by radiation degradation of the front-end receivers. We report the power budgets for all link variants where at least 1.8 dB safety margins are maintained. The Versatile Transceiver (VTRx) - the front-end module to be installed on-detector - is based on a commercial small form pluggable (SFP+) package, modified to optimize size and mass, assembled to host a qualified laser, PIN photodiode, custom-designed radiation tolerant laser driver and receiving amplifier. A set of VTRxs with validated components have been prototyped and compliance tested. We also present the radiation test results on front-end components and passive components. The total fluence tests for lasers and PINs have been carried out with pions and neutrons up to 4 x 1015/cm2. SEU tests have been performed on PIN photodiodes and the full receiver optical subassembly. Radiation induced absorption in a number of single mode and multi-mode fibers, at -25¡C and up to 500 kGy, have been measured and high performance candidates identified. Commercial off-of-the-shelf parts have been examined for use as back-end transceivers. Compliance tests on SFP+, 4+4 parallel optical engines and SNAP 12 transmitter/receivers have been completed.