OWC Using a Fully Integrated Optical Receiver With Large-Diameter APD

This letter presents a fully monolithically integrated receiver with a large-diameter avalanche photodiode (APD). Using a standard high-voltage 0.35-μm CMOS technology, the APD is implemented with separated absorption and multiplication regions optimizing the ionization ratio between holes and electrons. This optimized ionization ratio leads to a low excess noise factor of the APD, which considerably improves the receiver´s sensitivity to -31.8 dBm at 1 Gbit/s (bit error rate <;10^-9). A 1-Gbit/s wireless optical communication link with a distance of 3.3 m is demonstrated. Due to the highly sensitive receiver, it is possible to omit any kind of input optics, resulting in a wide receiving angle of 68° for a bit error rate of <;10^-9.