Design and Analysis of a 20 Gbps Metal-Insulator-Field Effect Transistor Photoreceiver for the OptoElectronic Integrated Circuit Receiver Applications

High-speed photoreceivers are important components for future high-bit rate communication systems. The use of a monolithical integration of photodetector and amplifier avoids loss making interconnections and enables high-speed performance, small size and cost-saving high frequency packaging. Particularly with respect to a commercial use, the degree of reproducibility and reliability has to be very high. The elimination of process uncertainties is indispensable. Hence, in our photoreceiver development, a photoreceiver based on optically gated metal-insulator-field effect transistor (MISFET) has been proposed to perform both the functions as photodetector and preamplifier. For future long-haul communication systems operate at bitrates of 40 Gbit/s and for broad-band mobile access systems using 38-GHz or 60-GHz carrier frequencies, ultrafast photoreceivers have to be provided. Therefore, an integration concept for InP-based optoelectronic monolithic integrated circuits for the 1.55-μm wavelength regime is studied, which allows independent optimization of the constituting devices. The device can be considered as a nano device as all the device parameters are in nanometer range. The design and characterization of a novel high sensitivity photo MISFET based OEIC receiver for using in 1.55 μm applications has been carried out based on 3D numerical modeling and device simulation. The bit error rate (BER) and sensitivity of the photoreceiver have also been computed. The proposed OEIC receiver has a transimpedance gain of 71.35 dB and sensitivity at 20 Gb/s for a BER of 10 -9 has been found to be -66 dBm. This seems to be a promising technology which will greatly simplify the design of optoelectronic integrated circuits including OEIC repeaters.