Noise-matched optical receiver front-end design and experiment

Abstract

SUMMARYIn this paper, the noise-matching theory used for microwave amplifiers is introduced into the design of a general high-speed optical receiver front-end circuit. The trade-off of the low-noise and broadband design of the front-end circuit is clarified quantitatively. As a design example, a commercially available PIN photodiode and HJ-FET (f max = 60 GHz) are used and a 20 Gbit/s noisematched PIN-FET optical receiver front end at an optical wavelength of 1.55 µm is designed. A trans-impedance gain of 53 ± 3 dBΩ, bandwidth of 17 GHz, sensitivity of -14 dBm in the simulation, and dynamic range of 16 dB are obtained.