Noise characteristics of a new heterojunction avalanche photodiode

Author

Chakrabarti, P. ; Chowdhury, S.C. ; Pal, B.B.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Commun. Eng., Birla Inst. of Technol., Ranchi, India

Volume

137

Issue

2

fYear

1990

fDate

4/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

97

Lastpage

100

Abstract

The new structure under consideration is similar to a double velocity avalanche transit time (DOVATT) diode. DOVATT is basically a heterojunction IMPATT diode which consists of one avalanche zone followed by two drift zones having different scattering limited velocities. Recent studies have shown that the structure can be used efficiently as a detector in optical communication systems. The new detector has been given the name photo-DOVATT. The paper examines the noise behaviour of the device. A quantitative study of the noise generated caused by randomness of multiplication process in the avalanche zone of an InP/InGaAsP photo-DOVATT has been carried out. It is observed that the device shows less noise voltage and higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) compared with other existing avalanche photodiodes

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; IMPATT diodes; avalanche photodiodes; electron device noise; gallium arsenide; gallium compounds; indium compounds; optical communication equipment; photodetectors; III-V semiconductors; InP-InGaAsP; avalanche zone; double velocity avalanche transit time diode; drift zones; heterojunction IMPATT diode; heterojunction avalanche photodiode; multiplication process; noise behaviour; noise voltage; optical communication systems; photo-DOVATT; scattering limited velocities; signal to noise ratio;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Optoelectronics, IEE Proceedings J

Publisher

iet

ISSN

0267-3932

Type

jour

Filename

50642