78 IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 40, NO. 1, JANUARY 2004 On the Performance Analysis and Design of an Integrated Front-End PIN/HBT Photoreceiver Nikhil Ranjan Das, Senior Member, IEEE, and M. Jamal Deen, Fellow, IEEE Abstract—A detailed study on the performance analysis and op- timum design of an integrated front-end PIN/HBT photoreceiver for fiber-optic communication is presented. Receiver circuits with two different transimpedance amplifiers—a single-stage common emitter (CE) amplifier and a three-stage amplifier comprising a CE amplifier and two emitter followers (EFs), are analyzed assuming a standard load of 50 . A technique to include the transit-time effect of a PIN photodetector on the overall receiver circuit anal- ysis is introduced and discussed. Gain–bandwidth product (GB) and gain–bandwidth–sensitivity measure product (GBS) are ob- tained as functions of feedback resistance and various de- vice parameters. Hence, some optimum designs are suggested using a photodetector of area 100 m and with a feedback resistance of 500 . The bandwidth plays a major role in determining the optimum designs for maximum GB and maximum GBS. A band- width GHz has been obtained for the photoreceiver even with a single-stage CE amplifier. The optimum design for a receiver with a three-stage amplifier shows a bandwidth of 35 GHz which is suitable for receivers operating well beyond 40 Gb/s; however, in this case, the gain is reduced. The performance of different fixed square-emitter structures are investigated to choose the optimum designs corresponding to different gains. Very low power dissipa- tion has been estimated for the optimized devices. The noise perfor- mance of the devices with optimum designs was calculated in terms of the minimum detectable optical power for a fixed bit-error rate of 10 . The present design indicates that GB and noise perfor- mance can be improved by using an optimum device design. Index Terms—Photodetector, photoreceiver, PIN/HBT pho- toreceiver, photodiode, photodetector modeling, photoreceiver modeling, photoreceiver performance, front-end photoreceiver, PIN photodiode, HBT amplifier. NOMENCLATURE Base length. Emitter length. Emitter width. Base-emitter separation. Base-collector separation. Collector layer thickness. Base thickness. Base doping density. Collector doping density. Mobile electron concentration in collector layer. for transistors in Fig. 4(b). Collector series resistance. Manuscript received July 3, 2002; revised December 26, 2002. This work was supported by strategic and research grants from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada (e-mail: jamal@mc- master.ca). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JQE.2003.821485 Sheet resistance of subcollector. Photodetector area. Photodetector I-layer thickness . Permittivity. Absorption coefficient. Generation rate. Impulse function of time . Unit step function of . Bulk life-time of carriers. Electron concentration (1). Hole concentration (2). Equilibrium value of . Electron (hole) velocity. Saturation velocity. Electron (hole) diffusion coefficient. Electron mobility. Electron diffusion length. Electron (hole) current density. Laplace transform of current density . Laplace transform of . Collector current. for [Fig. 4(b)]. Current gain. Short-circuit current-gain of HBT. Supply voltage (Fig. 4). Collector-emitter bias voltage. for : Fig. 4(b). Base-emitter voltage for : Fig. 4(b). Feedback resistance. Gain. Bandwidth. Sensitivity measure. Efficiency, quantum efficiency. GB Gain–bandwidth product. GBS Gain–bandwidth–sensitivity measure product. BEG Bandwidth–efficiency–gain. BEGS Bandwidth–efficiency–gain–sensitivity measure. Minimum detectable optical power. I. INTRODUCTION I N recent years, optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs) have attracted the interest of many researchers [1]–[12] because of their important role in the hardware for informa- tion technology. Photoreceiver OEICs have key roles [2]–[4] in high-speed optical fiber communications, in high-speed 0018-9197/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE