Zach Reiber

For my high frequency analog design course there were two quarter long projects to choose from: an audio amplifier, or a fiber optic cable system. My partner and I chose the fiber optic cable system. The system stars with a pseudo random sequence generator created through a linear feedback shift register. This output sequence is then sent to an amplifier stage that steps the voltage down to around 1Vpp. This signal is then sent to the LED stage of the circuit, which drives a 50Mhz IFE98. The last stage is the receiver part of the circuit, which has not yet been completed. It will consist of a fiber optic sensor. There have been quite a few challenges in this project. The main challenge has been designing our circuits in such a way that we can maintain high frequencies without too much noise. To do this we need to keep our connections as short as possible to reduce parallel wire inductance. To achieve this, we attached a piece of copper tape along the bottom end of our vector board, to which we connected our ground, and another small strip of copper tape acted as our 5v plane. With proper placement, we reduced our wire lengths significantly.

As I continue this project this page will be updated, and pictures will be provided.