10Gbps PIN-TIA has important role in today\'s ever growing fast optical fiber networks, especially in the FTTx sector. Continuous demand on internet bandwidth has driven the deployment of 10Gbps optical link to the edge of the network.

At more widely deployed 2.5Gbps, PIN-TIA photodetectors are low-cost, and have very high sensitivity (low optical power required at the detector). This means the 2.5Gbps link can tolerate much higher optical losses in its power budget. Therefore, in PON (passive optical network), the 2.5Gbps can be shared by more end users, with competitive average cost for each user.

When the bit rate increases to 10Gbps, the sensitivity of standard PIN-TIA decreases significantly (at least 6dB reduction). This means additional equipment is required for the same optical link, if the bit rate is increased from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps, to support the same distance transmission, and share with the same number of end users.

The optical power at the transmitter end needs to increase to compensate the reduction on power budget. In addition, the tolerance of chromatic dispersion in the 10Gbps link is much lower than that of the 2.5Gbps link. Therefore, some other mechanisms need to be introduced into the system, such as FEC. External modulators may be a choice to avoid the dispersion problem all together.