Infineon Technologies Introduces Industry First SiGe Single-Chip OC-192 Transceiver For High-Speed SDH/SONET Transmission Systems

Mar 20, 2001 | Market News

Anaheim,California, March 20, 2001 – Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX), a leading supplier of high-speed communications and fiber optics IC solutions, today announced the industry's first single-chip transceiver for OC-192 SDH/SONET high-speed transmission systems. The single-chip, Silicon Germanium design will allow manufacturers of high-speed transmission systems to create highly-integrated, high-performance, low power systems at competitive costs.

“Infineon’s OC-192 transceiver is designed to address the increasing demand for bandwidth intensive network solutions,” said Helmut Vogler, Vice President of Fiber Optics and High Speed ICs at Infineon. “We are helping our customers meet this demand by reducing time to market and system costs.”

The single-chip FOA6100 is an ultra low-power, 1.5 W 10Gb/s serial transceiver that performs parallel to serial and serial to parallel MUX/DEMUX functions. The FOA6100 integrates a 622 Mb/s reference clock. The chip operates from a single 3.3 V supply and is fully compliant with Bellcore, ITU (International Telecommunications Union) and OIF (Optical Internetwork Forum) standards definitions.

Manufactured in Infineon’s leading edge Silicon Germanium (SiGe) process technology (B7HF) the device represents a technology breakthrough by integrating a two-chip SerDes (serializer/deserializer) into a single-chip transceiver solution. This integration saves approximately 50% in board space and significantly reduces system cost.

The newest addition to Infineon’s 10 Gb/s family of products, the device contains an integrated clock multiplier unit with PLL (Phase Lock Loop) synthesizer and a 10 GHz VCO (Voltage Control Oscillator) on the serializer side and a clock-data recovery PLL and a VCO on the deserializer part. The transceiver features a low jitter, high-speed CML (Current-Mode Logic) transmitter serial-output and 16 bit LVDS (Low Voltage-Differential Signal) receiver parallel-output interface, which complies with OIF requirements. Infineon has integrated a byte-alignment and frame-detection unit based on the SONET protocol. The chip also includes line loop-back and diagnostic loop-back modes.

Infineon provides its customers with a single source for high-speed communications solutions. The new single-chip OC-192 transceiver can be used in combination with Infineon’s high-gain transimpedance amplifier (FOA1100) and low power consumption LDD (Laser Diode Driver) device (FOA2100), to build high-performance SONET transmission systems. This high-density, three-chip solution cuts power dissipation by more than 60% compared to alternative solutions requiring up to five chips.

Price and Availability


The FOA6100 Transceiver is well suited for SDH/SONET transmission systems, Ethernet PHYs for WAN applications, add/drop multiplexers and digital cross-connects. It is available as bare die and as a BGA package. The part is priced at US $400 in a BGA package in quantities of 50,000, and will sample in April.


About Infineon


Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In the fiscal year 2000 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 7.28 billion with about 29,000 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com

Information Number

INFCOM200103.052e