A comparative study of integrated photoreceivers using MSM/HEMT and PIN/HEMT technologies

Abstract

An experimental comparative study of PIN/HEMT and MSM/HEMT monolithically integrated photoreceivers for high-speed long-wavelength telecommunications systems is presented. The monolithic integration of the photodetector (either MSM or PIN) with the HEMT used a stacked layer structure design grown by OMVPE. Detector areas and amplifier feedback resistances were selected to result in similar bandwidths and responsivities for both the MSM- and PIN-based photoreceivers. Sensitivities for the MSM-HEMT photoreceivers were measured to be -16.9 dBm and -10.7 dBm at 5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s, respectively for a bit-error ratio (BER) of 10/sup -9/ and 2/sup 7/-1 pattern length PRBS data. Corresponding performance for the PIN/HEMT photoreceivers was -18.4 and -15.8 dBm. To the author's knowledge, this is the first direct experimental comparison of MSM- and PIN-based technologies for high-speed monolithic photoreceiver applications.