Highly sensitive 2 Gb/s optoreceiver with CMOS compatible avalanche photodiode

A highly sensitive optoelectronic receiver circuit is formed by combining a 100 μm diameter avalanche photodiode with an integrated transimpedance amplifier (TIA). Both main components are fabricated in a 0.35 μm standard silicon technology. The highly efficient avalanche photodiode which bases on a modified pin structure with a large detection volume is operated at 30 V reverse bias to obtain avalanche amplification. Bit error rate (BER) measurements using a 680 nm laser source modulated with a pseudorandom bit sequence (PRBS) of 2
³¹
-1 indicate a sensitivity of -31.8 dBm for a BER of 10
^-9
at 2 Gb/s.