Assessment of gamma and proton radiation effects on 100 Gbps commercial coherent optical transceiver

Abstract

The Acacia AC100M is a 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) commercial, coherent optical transceiver module with digital signal processing (DSP) application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). The AC100M was characterized with noise-loaded input to simulate power-starved link operation on the receiver and decoder for performance testing. Gamma radiation and 65 MeV proton radiation test campaigns at Defense MicroElectronics Activity (DMEA) and UC Davis Crocker Nuclear Laboratory (CNL), respectively, were completed to assess single event effects (SEEs) and total ionizing dose (TID) effects on the AC100M. After exposure to gamma radiation with TID level of ~13.7 krad(Si), communication with the AC100M module was lost and power cycling of the module and evaluation board could not restore nominal operation. The AC100M ASIC survived and experienced no performance degradation from proton equivalent TID exposure up to 66.7 krad(Si) with proton radiation. After proton equivalent TID level of 101 krad(Si), the AC100M did not functional nominally after power cycling. The calculated AC100M ASIC proton SEE cross section was 4.39×10-10 cm2 at the 65 MeV proton energy level.