220 MHz optical receiver with large-area integrated PIN photodiode

We propose a PIN photodiode combining high responsivity, fast drift times and low junction capacitance in BiCMOS technology. This fast PIN photodiode allows the design of fast optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEIC) for many advanced applications in optical sensing, optical data transmission and optical storage systems. Because of the low capacitance of 0.0105fF/ /spl mu/m/sup 2/ it is possible to design fast OEICs with large-area photodetectors. The proposed optical receiver applying a PIN photodiode with a diameter of 500 /spl mu/m and a capacitance of only 2pF attains a -3dB bandwidth of 220MHz, which corresponds to a maximum data rate of 300Mbit/s.