High-Speed CMOS Integrated Optical Receiver With an Avalanche Photodetector

We present a high-speed monolithically integrated optical receiver fabricated with 0.13-mum standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The optical receiver consists of a CMOS-compatible avalanche photodetector (CMOS-APD) and a transimpedance amplifier (TIA). The CMOS-APD provides high responsivity as well as large bandwidth. Its bandwidth is further enhanced by the TIA having negative capacitance, which compensates undesired parasitic capacitance. With the CMOS integrated optical receiver, 4.25-Gb/s optical data are successfully transmitted with a bit-error rate less than 10^-12 at the incident optical power of - 5.5 dBm.