A 20Gbps all-silicon APD-based receiver with CMOS IC

We report a CMOS receiver integrated with all-silicon (Si) microring avalanche photodiode working for 20Gbps NRZ optical fiber communication. The APD utilizes full SOI process and is compatible with CMOS circuits. Receiver utilized 28nm planar CMOS technology with analog bandwidth extension technology applied. Necessary quantization circuits and clock distributions are included. Integration is done by pad-to-pad wire bonding. Measurements with the integrated system proved functionality with 1310nm laser. Under 20Gbps NRZ signal at 10^−12 BER level, sensitivity reaches below −3dBm OMA and timing margin achieves 0.05UI eye opening. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of integrated all-Si optical receiver using fully CMOS compatible process without any modification.