1-Gb/s integrated optical detectors and receivers in commercial CMOS technologies

The ability to produce a high-performance monolithic CMOS photoreceiver, including the photodetector, could enable greater use of optics in short-distance communication systems. Such a receiver requires the ability to simultaneously produce a photodetector compatible with a high-volume high-yield CMOS process, as well as the entire receiver circuit. The quest for this element has yet to produce a clear winner, and has proven quite challenging. We review some of the work in this field with the goal of informing the reader as to the origin of the challenges and the implementation tradeoffs. Finally, we report experimental results from a monolithic CMOS photoreceiver realized in a 0.35-μm production CMOS process, including a CMOS photodiode. Operating at 1 Gb/s, the receiver requires an average input power of -6.3 dBm at 850 nm to obtain a measured bit error rate of 1×10^-9, and dissipates 1.5 mW at 2.2 V, increasing to 6 mW at 3.3 V