Considerations for Optical Receiver Design

The low dispersion and low attenuation properties of fibers between 1.3 μm and 1.6 μm make them more attractive for optical fiber transmission applications. In the absence of efficient avalanche photodiodes in this wavelength range, considerable research and development efforts on detectors as well as on the lownoise amplifier devices have been carried out. This paper reviews the present status of optical detectors and low-noise amplifier devices and discusses the low-noise amplifier design process by using a couple of examples at DS-1 and DS-4 bit rates.