Low-Power BiCMOS Optical Receiver With Voltage-Controlled Transimpedance

An optical receiver with voltage-controlled transimpedance using a current conveyor and a voltage amplifier monolithically integrated with a PIN photodiode in 0.6 mum BiCMOS technology is presented. The transimpedance is directly proportional to a voltage-controlled resistance, and can be continuously varied by changing its control voltage. Thanks to the mixed current-mode and voltage-mode signal processing, the bandwidth of the optical receiver is virtually independent of the photodiode capacitance. A linearity error smaller than 3.1%, a sensitivity dynamic range of 78.8 (37.9 dB) with the largest sensitivity of S = 890 mV/muW at 660 nm, an offset voltage smaller than 0.53 mV, a largest maximum power consumption of only 3.2 mW, a small-signal frequency bandwidth up to 189 MHz, a large-signal rise time/fall time down to 3.7 ns/3.3 ns, and an output noise level down to -77.8 dBm (for a frequency of 50 MHz and a resolution bandwidth of 30 kHz) are achieved.

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