Expand this Topic clickable element to expand a topic
Skip to content
Optica Publishing Group
  • Optical Fiber Communications Conference
  • OSA Trends in Optics and Photonics (Optica Publishing Group, 2002),
  • paper WN1

Low-noise, high-speed avalanche photodiodes

Not Accessible

Your library or personal account may give you access

Abstract

For high-bit-rate, long-haul systems, the avalanche photodiode (APD) is frequently the pho-todetector of choice owing to its internal gain, which provides a sensitivity margin relative to PIN photodiodes. APDs can achieve 5–10 dB better sensitivity than PINs, provided that the multiplication noise is low and the gain-bandwidth product of the APD is sufficiently high. The multiplication region of an APD plays a critical role in determining the gain, the multiplication noise, and the gain-bandwidth product. Low multiplication noise and high gain-bandwidth products have been achieved by submicron scaling of the thickness of the multiplication region.1–9 This is due to the nonlocal nature of impact ionization, which can be neglected if the thickness of the multiplication region is much greater than the “dead length”, the distance over which carriers gain sufficient energy to impact ionize. However, when the dead space accounts for a significant portion of the multiplication region, the number of ionization chains that result in multiplication greatly in excess of the average gain is reduced, which, in turn, yields lower noise for a given gain. Recently, it has been shown that the noise of APDs with thin multiplication regions can be reduced even further by incorporating new materials and impact ionization engineering with beneficially designed heterostructures.10,11 High gain-bandwidth products have been achieved by incorporating low-noise multiplication regions into resonant-cavity and waveguide structures.7,12

© 2002 Optical Society of America

PDF Article
More Like This
Low-Noise, High-Speed Avalanche Photodiodes

J. C. Campbell and A.L. Holmes
IThE3 Integrated Photonics Research (IPR) 2002

HIGH-SPEED, LOW-NOISE AVALANCHE PHOTODIODES

J. C. Campbell, H. Nie, C. Lenox, G. Kinsey, P. Yuan, A. L. Holmes, and B. G. Streetman
FG1 Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) 2000

Avalanche Photodiode with High Dynamic Range, High Speed and Low Noise

Alberto Ciarrocchi, Wei Quan, Maria Hämmerli, and Hektor Meier
Th2E.1 European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication (ECOC) 2022

Select as filters


Select Topics Cancel
© Copyright 2024 | Optica Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved