Design and analysis of a single HBT-based optical receiver front-end

In this paper, we present the design and analysis of a proposed single heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT)-based photoreceiver front-end configuration. This configuration uses a single heterojunction bipolar transistor for both photodetection and amplification purpose. The analysis of the proposed optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) receiver configuration has been carried out and performance characteristics have been determined for an InP/InGaAs HBT receiver for operation in 1.55 μm wavelength region. The proposed receiver has a reasonable sensitivity along with a high transimpedance gain and large bandwidth comparable to contemporary optical receivers based on separate detector and amplifier. Use of a single HBT in the front-end would greatly simplify the fabrication of optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) receiver in the monolithic form.