Position dependence of the transient response of a position-sensitive detector under periodic pulsed light modulation

A model based on sinusoidal steady-state analysis is developed for the position-sensitive detector (PSD), which is approximated as a distributed RC transmission line. This model is used to study the output response of the lateral effect PSD (i) when only one pulse-modulated light beam is incident and (ii) when two light beams of different wavelengths, with one beam modulated at a frequency f and the other beam modulated at a frequency 2f, are incident at the same time. The simulation shows, and experiments confirm, that the transient response of the PSD consists of a position-dependent dead time (time for the output current to sense the change in the induced photocurrent) and a position-independent exponential rise decay time. For the application of resolving the positions of two or more pulsed-modulated light spots, it is shown that there is a position-dependent upper limit on the usable modulation frequency. With the per-unit-length values chosen for the sheet resistance as R=315 Ω/mm and the junction capacitance as C=330 pF/mm, the modulation frequency limit is determined to be 20 kHz