Saturation characteristics of fast photodetectors

Author

Liu, Pao-Lo ; Williams, Keith J. ; Frankel, Michael Y. ; Esman, Ronald D.

Author_Institution

Code 5672, Naval Res. Lab., Washington, DC, USA

Volume

47

Issue

7

fYear

1999

fDate

7/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1297

Lastpage

1303

Abstract

Saturation of photodetectors is measured in the time domain using optical pulses of different duration and in the frequency domain using amplitude-modulated optical carriers. In the time domain, saturation is characterized by a reduction in peak photocurrent and growth of a pulse tail indicating that significant carrier velocity reduction is occurring as the opposing space-charge field persists. In the frequency domain, saturation is characterized by a reduction in response to a sinusoidal signal. The time-domain saturation measurements are shown to result in substantially larger 1-dB compression currents than frequency-domain measurements for the same photodiode. Transient space-charge calculations and a spectral analysis based on Gaussian pulses are shown to help to explain the apparent differences and to correlate the measured results from the time and frequency domains

Keywords

frequency-domain analysis; optical pulse generation; optical receivers; p-i-n photodiodes; photodetectors; spectral analysis; time-domain analysis; Gaussian pulses; amplitude-modulated optical carriers; carrier velocity reduction; compression currents; fast photodetectors; frequency domain; optical pulses; peak photocurrent; pulse tail; sinusoidal signal; space-charge field; spectral analysis; time domain; transient space-charge calculations; Current measurement; Frequency domain analysis; Frequency measurement; Optical pulses; Optical saturation; Photoconductivity; Photodetectors; Pulse measurements; Tail; Time measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9480

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/22.775469

Filename

775469