Optical receiver with large-area photodiode for multilevel modulation

A large-diameter PIN photodiode (400 μm) with antireflection coating optimized for wavelength 650 nm was integrated with an automatic gain control transimpedance amplifier, linear post amplifier and 50Ω linear driver. The presented optical receiver shows a high linearity in receiving multilevel signals. A sensitivity of ?29.5dBm (BER = 10^?9) at 200 Mb/s with binary signal was achieved. By using four-level pulse amplitude modulation (4-PAM) a data rate of 400 Mb/s and a sensitivity of ?21.5 dBm (SER = 10^?9) was achieved.