Burst-Mode Penalty of AC-Coupled Optical Receivers Optimized for 8B/10B Line Code

We present an ac-coupled scheme for burst-mode optical receivers optimized for 8B/10B line code. The cutoff frequencies of the ac-coupled circuits are carefully adjusted to achieve fast response with minimal distortion to the 8B/10B signal spectrum. The proposed scheme is simple and technically feasible due to its adaptability to well-established continuous-mode components. The burst-mode penalty of the ac-coupled receiver is also investigated using numerical analysis. The numerical results are compared with measured data and good agreement is observed.