A 3 Gb/s optical detector standard 0.18um CMOS

This paper presents a monolithic optical detector, consisting of an integrated photodiode and a pre-amplifier in a standard 0.18μm CMOS technology. 3Gb/s data-rate was achieved at λ=850nm with an average optical power of 25 μW and BER10. This data-rate is over half an order of magnitude higher than that of current state-of-the-art optical detectors in standard CMOS. High speed operation is achieved without reducing circuit responsivity by using an inherently robust analog equalizer that compensates (in gain and phase) for the photodiode roll-off in the range from 1 MHz to 1 GHz. The presented solution is applicable to various photodiode structures, wavelengths and