046-SINDHUJA RAO(EEI-10)

DESIGN OF A STABILIZED, DC-POWERED

ANALOG LASER DIODE DRIVER
pandey.indrajit@gmail.com
1) Sindhuja Rao

2) Solanki Patra

3) Madhuparna Ghosh

4) Shreya Acharya

INTRODUCTION
In the past ten years, the commercial and industrial use of laser diodes has dramaticallyincreased with some
commonapplications such as barcode scanning and fiber optic communications. The optical characteristics, small size,
and ruggedness of laser diodes have allowed many new uses to be commercialized. The output of laser diodes is very
bright considering their small size.
but the laser diode is current hungry i.e. it takes all the current provided to it.
In the most ideal form, LASER DIODE DRIVER is a constant current source, linear, noiseless, and accurate, that
delivers exactly the current to the laser diode that it needs to operate for a particular application. The user chooses
whether to keep laser diode or photodiode current constant and at what level. Then the control system drives current
to the laser diode safely and at the appropriate level.so therefore to appropriately use the laser diode safely and
accordingly, a driving circuit is used.
LASER DIODE PHYSICS
When an LED-like structure is contained in a resonant cavity formed by polishing the parallel end faces, a laser can
be formed. Laser diodes are commonly used in optical storage devices and for high speed optical communication.
A closer look at laser diodes

Fig. 1 The laser diode converts electrical energy into energy in form of light.

Laser diode is a laser where the medium is a semiconductor, formed by a p-n junction, and powered by electric
current.
Basically, a laser diode is a combination of semiconductor chip that emits coherent light and a monitor photodiode
chip for feedback control of power output, in a hermetically packaged and sealed case. The semiconductor materials
that are used to create p-n junction diodes that emit light today are: Gallium arsenide, indium phosphide, gallium
antimonide, and gallium nitride.

SIMPLE BLOCK DIAGRAM:

046-SINDHUJA RAO(EEI-10)

CIRCUIT DIAGRAM:

THE WORKING PRINCIPLE

A 5 V reference voltage is created by the Zener diode D2 and the resistor R4. This voltage is filtered by the use of
the capacitor C2 and applied to the input of the opamp connected as buffer. The buffer is loaded with trimmer
potentiometer connected to ground. In this way on its middle terminal the voltage can vary between 0 and the
reference voltage. The second opamp together with the power NMOS transistor work as voltage to current converter the source voltage of the transistor is identical to the input voltage of the second opamp. This voltage appears at the
current defining resistor R5. The generated current is Igen=Vin/R5, where Vin is the voltage drop over R5 and also
the input voltage of the second opamp. For e.g. if 5V Zener diode and 10 Ohm R5 resistor is used - the maximum
possible generated current is 500 mA. If higher current is needed, either the reference voltage should be increased;

046-SINDHUJA RAO(EEI-10)
either the value of R5 shall be reduced. Because high current can flow through the NMOS transistor, it must be
enough strong to sustain it. The power generated by the R5 must be also properly dissipated. For this case the
maximum power generated by R5 is 2.5W - 5V*0.5A. so a 5 W resistor should be used. The resistor R3 is optional. In
some cases R1 also. R2 and C1 are used to protect the laser diode from some voltage spikes.The used opamp and
NMOS transistor:
The power NMOS transistor normally has a big working area, what in most of the cases presumes big input
capacitance. For some devices it can reach some dozens of nanofarades. This capacitance appears as capacitive load
for the opamp. The opamp must be able to drive such kind of big capacitive load, without losing its stability. Some
opamps are compensated for similar loads, but a plenty of standard opamps will oscillate. Therefore it is necessary to
carefully check in both datasheets ( of the opamp and the NMOS ), what is the gate capacitance of the power NMOS
transistor, and is the opamp stable with this load. In some cases, even the opamp is not stable with the specific NMOS
transistor as load, the stability can be drastically improved by the "isolating" the load from the opamp output by the
use of simple resistor. This in the schematics is the function of R1.The LD is connected at JP1, the power supply at
JP2.

Project outcome
The laser diode can be operated at a constant current as the user wants to operate it.It also stabilizes the laser diode
and hence provides safety without damaging it.

Future scope
The enormous uses of the laser diodes provides this project to be a major part of the ongoing researches. Be it CDs,
DVDs, or the Blu-ray disc which actually depends on the color of the laser used, the fiber optics communication
transmitters, it may be a small circuit but it does provide us with the proper use of the laser diode.The drive system
can be expanded to become the center of a total communication scheme which uses a wide variety of analog
encoding. This wouldalso include the design and implementation of a receiver network as well asencoding/decoding
hardware.

References:
1.
2.
3.

Electronic devices and circuits by J B Gupta

Electronics: fundamentals and applications 8th edition by D.Chattopadhyay and P.C. Rakshit
Op-Amps And Linear Integrated Circuits 4th Edition By Ramakant A. Gayakwad.
4. http://www.talkingelectronics.com/pay/BEC-3/Page53.html
5. http://www.photonics.com/EDU/Handbook.aspx?AID=32187
6. http://www.teamwavelength.com/info/laserdiodedrivers.php