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

The ability to produce a high-performance monolithic CMOS photoreceiver, in cluding the photodetector, could enable greater use of optics in short-dist ance communication systems, Such a receiver requires the ability to simulta neously produce a photodetector compatible with a high-volume high-yield CM OS process, as well as the entire receiver circuit. The quest for this elem ent 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 reade r as to the origin of the challenges and the implementation tradeoffs, Fina lly,we report experimental results from a monolithic CMOS photoreceiver rea lized in a 0.35-mu m production CMOS process, including a CMOS photodiode. Operating at 1 Gb/s, the receiver requires an average input power of -6.3 d Bm at 850 nm to obtain a measured bit-error rate of 1 x 10(-9): and dissipa tes 1.5 mW at 2.2 V, increasing to 6 mW at 3.3 V.