200 μm APD OEIC in 0.35 μm BiCMOS

An optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) in a 0.35 μm BiCMOS technology is presented. The receiver designed for optical wireless communication and communication over plastic optical fibre for data rates up to 2 Gbit/s has a 200 μm diameter avalanche photodiode (APD). Thanks to a thick intrinsic zone the APD has a low capacitance of 0.5 pF. The chip requires a supply voltage of 3.3 V and has a current consumption of 76 mA. The OEIC provides a single-ended output swing of 550 mV on 50 Ω and a total transimpedence of 260 kΩ with a bandwidth of 1.08 GHz. The OEIC achieves a sensitivity of −32.2 dBm at a BER of 10−9 for a data rate of 2 Gbit/s.