Large diameter high-speed InGaAs receivers for free-space lasercom

Abstract

The U. S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and OptoGration, Inc. have collaborated in the development and testing of large area, high speed InGaAs avalanche photodiode (APD) receivers for use in free-space lasercom systems. A 200 micron diameter InGaAs APD receiver has been tested in a free-space lasercom testbed and has demonstrated sensitivities of -42.4 dBm at 622 Mbps and -44.8 dBm at 155 Mbps. A 100 micron diameter receiver has been tested with a resulting sensitivity of -35.75 dBm at 2.4883 Gbps. These receivers are made possible due to OptoGration's capability to manufacture a large area, high speed InGaAs APD with an effective ionization ratio of < 0.2 and by matching the APD device with an appropriate transimpedance amplifier and limiting amplifier. Development and testing of the APD receivers will be described below.

Development of a large area InGaAs APD receiver based on an impact ionization engineered detector for free-space lasercomm applications

“…Previous testing and analysis of APDs designed and built by OGI using I 2 E has shown that these devices not only have very low k eff and thus very low excess noise, but the sensitivity increase can be directly measured through bit error rate testing and pulse detection efficiency testing 2,3,4 . OGI designed APDs have also demonstrated the ability to maintain high speed with large devices 5,6 . The I 2 E APDs were the obvious detector choice for the DMOI and the initial plan was to use a small 2 x 2 array of 100 micron square I 2 E APDs as the receiver detector 3 .…”

Comparison study of packet error rates and bit error rates at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory free-space lasercom test facility

“…The system includes several components to simultaneously measure atmospheric conditions and communications link performance to characterize the FSO lasercom link in a maritime environment. The lasercom receiver, used for bit error rate and packet error rate testing, is a 200 micron diameter InGaAs Avalanche photodiode (APD) from OptoGration with a MAX3658 Maxim trans-impedance amplifier (TIA) optimized 4 The APD was mounted on a small electronic amplifier board, designed and built by NRL, with a MAX3747 Maxim limiting amplifier and then tested at 155Mbps, 622Mbps, and 1.0625Gbps in the lab. The corresponding sensitivities were -44.8dBm for a BER of 1.42 x 10 -9 , -42.4dBm for a BER of 5.22 x 10 -10 , and -36.2dBm for a BER of 6.43 x 10 -10 respectively.…”

InAlAs/InGaAs avalanche photodiode arrays for free space optical communication

“…We have shown that large-area InAlAs/InGaAs APDs can deliver as much as 10 dB more sensitivity than PIN-based detectors without sacrificing the bandwidth required for demanding FSO applications [6,7]. When fabricated in an array configuration, these devices are capable of satisfying the performance criteria of a PSD and a data receiver.…”