High sensitivity SOA-PIN/TIA photoreceiver for 40 Gb/s applications and beyond

This paper reports a differential photoreceiver module designed for short reach applications such as access network and data center interconnect. It consists of a monolithically integrated semi-conductor optical amplifier with a PIN photodiode and a linear transimpedance amplifier (TIA) mounted on the same carrier. A matching circuit is placed between the PIN and the TIA in order to increase the cut-off frequency. The module shows a - 3 dB bandwidth of 43 GHz, a single-ended conversion gain of 10 000 V/W for an optical input power of -25 dBm and a sensitivity at 40 Gb/s non-return-to-zero operation of -22.5 dBm for a bit error rate of 10(-9).