We demonstrate a novel type of linear cascade green light-emitting diode (LED) arrays as a light source for in-car or harsh environment plastic optical fiber (POF) communications. To further enhance its dynamic and static performance, an InGaN layer is inserted between an n-type GaN cladding layer and InGaN-GaN multiple quantum wells as an efficient current spreading layer. Compared with the control device without that layer, our three-LED cascade array demonstrates a smaller turn-on voltage (9.3 versus 11 V at 20 mA) and a larger output power (25.5 versus 22.5 mW at 180 mA), corresponding to an enhancement of around 31% in wall-plug efficiency. Furthermore, under the constant voltage bias of an in-car battery (12 V), our three-LED array exhibits an electrical-to-optical 3-dB bandwidth (100 versus 40 MHz) performance superior to that of the control device. Even under high-temperature dynamic operation, we observe that the InGaN insertion layer gives strong enhancement of modulation speed with negligible degradation of the output power, unlike the red resonant-cavity LEDs conventionally used for POF. We achieve 200-Mb/s error-free transmission at 200 degrees C which is the highest operation temperature among all the reported high-speed LEDs.
