VSCEL Sector Growing At Over 20 Percent CAGR

In a new report ‘Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSEL): Technologies and Global Markets’ BCC Research estimates that the VCSEL market is expected to grow from $781.6 million in 2015 to $2.1 billion in 2020, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9 percent from 2015 through 2020.

Optical fibre data transmission, the largest segment of the global VCSELs market, reached a market value of $246.7 million in 2014 and should reach $618.2 million by 2020, with a CAGR of 20.2 percent.

Analogue broadband signal transmission reached $93.7 million in 2015 and should reach $295.3 million in 2020, with a CAGR of 25.8 percent.

The report covers factors currently driving and restraining the growth of the market, as well as factors impacting the future of the industry.

The use of VCSELs has increased in the optical communications industry in the past 15 years. Demand for VCSELs has increased in consumer electronics products and other high-end applications such as gesture recognition and 3-D imaging.

Extensive R&D by companies and defence services worldwide in VCSELs has resulted in high-power conversion efficiency of 63.4 percent in the current year (other types of commercially available lasers have typical power conversion of 20 to 25 percent).

Source : http://www.compoundsemiconductor.net/article/99086-vscel-sector-growing-at-over-20-percent-cagr.html

Isn't this funny that 63.4% is quite the same number of best-in class 850nm PiN diode responsitivity.

I can't wait to see POET conversion efficiency factor !

Especially since :

POET implements a new paradigm for lasing utilizing a new laser structure in the form of a digital opto-electronic switch (DOES).

The switch has binary optical states, i.e. it has high impedance (laser off) and low impedance (laser on) digital electrical states which ensures an essentially infinite extinction ratio.

The DOES is a digital device and has internal gain and thus it is triggered to the on state with a single transistor delivering a much smaller drive current than a conventional laser driver circuit.

It is worth noting here that all conventional lasers (including VCSELs) are fundamentally analog devices (PN diodes) and they require modulation around a bias current set point.