A 2 Gb/s optical receiver with monolithically integrated MSM photodetector in standard CMOS process

A monolithically standard complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) optical receiver with a metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetector is presented in this paper. An active-feedback transimpedance amplifier (TIA) with negative Miller capacitance is used to increase the bandwidth of the receiver. The MSM photodetector with high responsivity provides higher sensitivity for the optical receiver. The optical receiver implemented in chartered 0.35 μm process achieves a 1.7 GHz bandwidth due to the low capacitance of the MSM photodetector. 2 Gb/s optical data are successfully transmitted with a bit-error rate of 10⁻⁹ at an optical power of −15 dBm. The power consumption of the receiver is 94 mW under a single 3.3 V supply.