Chapter 5

OPTICAL RECEIVER
 Content
• Physical Principles of Photodiodes
• pin, APD
• Photodetectors characteristics (Quantum efficiency,
Responsivity, S/N)
• Noise in Photodetector Circuits
• Photodiode Response Time
• Photodiodes structures
 pin Photodetector

The high electric field present in the depletion region causes photo-generated carriers to
Separate and be collected across the reverse –biased junction. This give rise to a current
Flow in an external circuit, known as photocurrent.
Energy-Band diagram for a pin photodiode
 Photocurrent
• Optical power absorbed,P(x) in the depletion region can be written in terms
of incident optical power, P0 :

 s (  ) x
P( x)  P0 (1  e ) [6-1]

• Absorption coefficient  s ( ) strongly depends on wavelength. The upper

wavelength cutoff for any semiconductor can be determined by its energy
gap as follows:
1.24
 c ( m )  [6-2]
E g (eV)
• Taking entrance face reflectivity into consideration, the absorbed power in
the width of depletion region, w, becomes:

(1  R f ) P( w)  P0 (1  e  s (  ) w )(1  R f )
Optical Absorption Coefficient
 Responsivity
• The primary photocurrent resulting from absorption is:

q
Ip  P0 (1  e  s (  ) w )(1  R f ) [6-3]
h

• Quantum Efficiency:

# of electron - hole photogenerated pairs


# of incident photons
[6-4]
IP / q

P0 / h
• Responsivity:
IP q
  [A/W] [6-5]

P0 h
Responsivity vs. wavelength
 Avalanche Photodiode (APD)
APDs internally multiply the
primary photocurrent before it
enters to following circuitry.
In order to carrier multiplication
take place, the photogenerated
carriers must traverse along a
high field region. In this region,
photogenerated electrons and
holes gain enough energy to
ionize bound electrons in VB
upon colliding with them. This
multiplication is known as Optical radiation
impact ionization. The newly
created carriers in the presence of Reach-Through APD structure (RAPD)
high electric field result in more showing the electric fields in depletion
ionization called avalanche region and multiplication region.
effect.
 Responsivity of APD

• The multiplication factor (current gain) M for all carriers generated in the
photodiode is defined as:
IM
M  [6-6]
Ip
• Where I M is the average value of the total multiplied output current & I P
is the primary photocurrent.

• The responsivity of APD can be calculated by considering the current gain

as:

q
 APD  M  0 M [6-7]

h
Current gain (M) vs. Voltage for different optical
wavelengths
 Photodetector Noise & S/N
• Detection of weak optical
signal requires that the
photo detector and its
following amplification
circuitry be optimized for a
desired signal-to-noise
ratio.
• It is the noise current which
determines the minimum
optical power level that can
be detected. This minimum
detectable optical power
defines the sensitivity of
photo detector. That is the
optical power that S signal power from photocurrent
generates a photocurrent 
with the amplitude equal to N photodetector noise power  amplifier noise power
that of the total noise
current (S/N=1)
 Signal Calculation
• Consider the modulated optical power signal P(t) falls on the photodetector
with the form of:
P (t )  P0 [1  ms (t )] [6-8]

• Where s(t) is message electrical signal and m is modulation index.

Therefore the primary photocurrent is (for pin photodiode M=1):
q
i ph  MP(t )  I P [DC value]  i p (t )[AC current] [6-9]
h

• The root mean square signal current is then:

 ip M   s
2 2 2 2 [6-9]
is
m 2 I P2
 p
2 2
ip  for sinusoidal signal [6-10]
2
 Noise Sources in Photodetecors
• The principal noises associated with photodetectors are :
1- Quantum (Shot) noise: arises from statistical nature of the production
and collection of photo-generated electrons upon optical illumination. It
has been shown that the statistics follow a Poisson process.
2- Dark current noise: is the current that continues to flow through the
bias circuit in the absence of the light. This is the combination of bulk
dark current, which is due to thermally generated e and h in the pn
junction, and the surface dark current, due to surface defects, bias
voltage and surface area.
• In order to calculate the total noise presented in photodetector, we should
sum up the root mean square of each noise current by assuming that those
are uncorrelated.

• Total photodetector noise current=quantum noise current +bulk dark

current noise + surface current noise
 Noise calculation (1)
• Quantum noise current (lower limit on the sensitivity):

2 2
iQ   Q  2qI P BM F ( M )2
[6-11]

B: Bandwidth, F(M) is the noise figure and generally is F ( M )  M 0  x  1.0

x
•

• Bulk dark current noise:

  DB
2
i DB 2
 2qI D BM 2 F ( M ) [6-12]

Note that for pin photodiode

I D is bulk dark current
M 2 F (M )  1
• Surface dark current noise: IL is the surface current.

  DS
2
i DS 2
 2qI L B [6-13]
 Noise calculation (2)
• The total rms photodetector noise current is:

  N  iQ
2 2 2 2 2
iN  i DB  i DS
 2q ( I P  I D ) BM 2 F ( M )  2qI L B [6-14]

• The thermal noise of amplifier connected to the photodetector is:

2 2 4k B TB
iT  T  [6-15]
RL

RL input resistance of amplifier, and k B  1.38  10 23 JK -1 is Boltzmann

cte.
 S/N Calculation

• Having obtained the signal and total noise, the signal-to-noise-ratio can be
written as:

2
S iP M 2
 [6-16]
N 2q( I P  I D ) BM 2 F ( M )  2qI L B  4k B TB / RL

• Since the noise figure F(M) increases with M, there always exists an
optimum value of M that maximizes the S/N. For sinusoidally modulated
signal with m=1 and F ( M )  M x :

x2 2qI L  4k B T / R L [6-17]

M opt 
xq ( I P  I D )
 Photodetector Response Time

• The response time of a photodetector with its output circuit depends

mainly on the following three factors:
1- The transit time of the photocarriers in the depletion region. The transit
time t ddepends on the carrier drift velocity v d and the depletion layer
width w, and is given by: w
td  [6-18]
vd
2- Diffusion time of photocarriers outside depletion region.
3- RC time constant of the circuit. The circuit after the photodetector acts
like RC low pass filter with a passband given by:

1
B [6-19]
2RT CT
RT  Rs || RL and CT  C a  C d
 Photodiode response to optical pulse

Typical response time of the

photodiode that is not fully depleted
 Various optical responses of photodetectors:
Trade-off between quantum efficiency & response time
• To achieve a high quantum
efficiency, the depletion layer
width must be larger than 1 /  s
(the inverse of the absorption
coefficient), so that most of the
light will be absorbed. At the
same time with large width, the
capacitance is small and RC
time constant getting smaller,
leading to faster response, but
wide width results in larger
transit time in the depletion
region. Therefore there is a
trade-off between width and
QE. It is shown that the best is:

1/  s  w  2 / s
 Structures for InGaAs APDs
• Separate-absorption-and multiplication (SAM) APD

light

InP substrate
InP buffer layer
INGaAs Absorption layer

InP multiplication layer

Metal contact

• InGaAs APD superlattice structure (The multiplication region is composed

of several layers of InAlGaAs quantum wells separated by InAlAs barrier
layers.
Temperature effect on avalanche gain
Comparison of photodetectors