A 25-Gb/s Monolithic Optical Receiver With Improved Sensitivity and Energy Efficiency

A high-performance integrated optical receiver is realized in photonic BiCMOS technology. The receiver includes waveguide type Ge photodetector (PD), transimpedance amplifier, single-to-differential converter, postamplifier, and output buffer, all of which are monolithically implemented on a Si wafer. It achieves bit-error rate (BER) of 10
^-12
for 25-Gb/s 2
³¹
- 1 PRBS at the incident optical power of -10 dBm with energy efficiency of 1.5 pJ/b. In addition, with the help of the accurate Ge-PD circuit model, the simulated optical receiver eye diagrams and BER performances accurately predict the measured results.