With a directly modulated 850 nm single-mode
vertical cavity surface emitting laser (SM-VCSEL), we experimentally achieve a gross data rate of ∼38 Gbps over a 2.5 m
optical wireless communication (OWC) link at the 7% ReedSolomon forward error correction (RS-FEC) limit. The OWC
link is demonstrated using an eye-safe transmitted optical power
of -1.47 dBm and discrete multi-tone (DMT) modulation with
adaptive bit-and-power loading. The SM-VCSEL has a relative
intensity noise (RIN) of ∼-137 dB/Hz, which is lower than that of
a typical commercial 850 nm multimode VCSEL (∼-129 dB/Hz).
Therefore, under almost identical OWC link operating conditions, the SM-VCSEL provides a gross data-rate increase of
∼19 Gbps and an optical signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) gain of
∼5 dB compared to its multimode counterpart having a similar
modulation bandwidth. Furthermore, we demonstrate an errorfree net data rate of ∼17 Gbps at a received optical power of
-7 dBm, which suggests the feasibility of utilising the SM-VCSEL
to realise indoor gigabit OWC applications.