Ultra-Sensitive PIN-Photodiode Receiver

A monolithically integrated receiver consisting of a low-capacitance PIN photodiode and photo-charge integrating amplifier in 0.18- μ m CMOS is introduced launching new class ultra-sensitive optical receivers. The has junction capacitance 1.5 fF at light-sensitive diameter 30 m, responsivity 0.39 A/W 635 nm, rise/fall times 0.73/0.92 ns reverse bias 20 V. common-source integrates the photo-charges on smallest possible integration capacitor, which gate-drain overlap capacitance. data bits are reconstructed by double sampling. In such way, sensitivity SPAD receivers achieved, however without using any impact ionization. At 50 Mb/s, −56.4 dBm for bit error ratio (BER) 2 × 10 −3 obtained wavelength nm.