Optical wireless receiver circuit with integrated APD and high background-light immunity

Abstract

This paper presents two different monolithically integrated optoelectronic receiver circuits in one chip. One circuit includes a 200 μm diameter, high responsivity avalanche photodiode with a highly-sensitive receiver for wireless optical data communication at a data rate of 1Gbps with a sensitivity of -31.8 dBm. The second circuit includes two PN-photodiodes and a differential TIA with a nonlinear feedback to detect light power differences down to -90 dBm. The second circuit is implemented twice: for beam positioning in x- and y-direction. The chip was fabricated in a 0.35 μm high-voltage CMOS technology and tested under strong background-light conditions representative for optical wireless communication scenarios.