Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.33180/InfMIDEM2019.302 Journal of Microelectronics,

Electronic Components and Materials
Vol. 49, No. 3(2019), 133 – 138

Analysis and Design Consideration of a High

Sensitivity Silicon Avalanche Photodiode Receiver
for Low Frequency Applications
Bojan Gergič, Denis Đonlagić

University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Maribor, Slovenia
Abstract: Silicon avalanche photodiodes (APDs) are designed predominantly for high-speed communication applications, but they
can also offer interesting low-light application solutions in lower frequency bands. The design and analysis of a high sensitive silicon
avalanche photodiode (APD) receiver for low-light fiber-optical sensor applications is described in this paper. The presented analysis
shows relatively significant differences in the overall achievable signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SINAD) of an optical receiver
when using otherwise apparently very similar APDs. Furthermore, to maximize SINAD for the selected APD at a given target total
receiver gain, an optimum setting exists between diodes’ internal gain (reverse voltage) and transimpedance gain. Unfortunately,
these optimum settings are usually not determinable from the typical specification parameters that are given by APD suppliers, but
rather need to be determined experimentally. A circuit with low-noise transimpedance amplifier (TIA) followed by post-amplifier and
low-pass filter has, thus, been designed for measurement of the fiber-optical sensor signals with optical power less than 100 pW at 20
kHz bandwidth. The overall SINAD of a receiver circuit is highly dependent on APD excess noise and, therefore, several receiver circuits
with different APDs have been built and tested. The receiver responsivity 5.5 GV/W and SINAD of more than 20 dB are achieved with
the optimally selected APD.

Keywords: Optoelectronics; optical receivers; avalanche photodiode (APD); fiber-optical sensors

Načrtovanje in analiza visoko občutljivega

optičnega sprejemnika s silicijevo plazovno
fotodiodo za nizkofrekvenčne aplikacije
Izvleček: Silicijeve polprevodniške plazovne fotodiode so pretežno načrtovane za visoke hitrosti v komunikacijah, vendar lahko
nudijo tudi pri nižjih frekvencah zanimive aplikacijske rešitve s šibko svetlobo. V tem članku je opisano načrtovanje in analiza visoko
občutljivega optičnega sprejemnika s silicijevo plazovno fotodiodo za optične vlakenske senzorske aplikacije s šibkimi optičnimi signali.
Predstavljena analiza prikazuje relativno velike razlike v doseženem skupnem razmerju med signalom in šumom ter popačenjem
(SINAD) optičnega sprejemnika pri uporabi sicer navidezno zelo podobnih plazovnih fotodiod. Poleg tega obstaja za doseganje
maksimalnega razmerja SINAD pri izbrani diodi in danem ciljnem skupnem ojačenju optičnega sprejemnika optimalna nastavitev med
notranjim ojačenjem (zaporno napetostjo) plazovne fotodiode in ojačenjem transimpedančnega ojačevalnika. Žal teh optimalnih
nastavitev običajno ne moremo določiti iz tipičnih parametrov, ki jih podajajo proizvajalci plazovnih fotodiod, ampak jih je potrebno
določiti eksperimentalno. Zatorej je bilo načrtano vezje z nizkošumnim transimpedančnim ojačevalnikom in dodatnim ojačevalnikom
ter nizkoprepustnim filtrom za merjenje šibkih signalov iz optičnih vlakenskih senzorjev z optično močjo manjšo kot 100 pW pri 20 kHz
pasovni širini. Skupno razmerje SINAD sprejemnika je precej odvisno od presežnega šuma plazovne fotodiode, zato je bilo sestavljenih
in testiranih več sprejemniških vezij z različnimi plazovnimi fotodiodami. Z optimalno izbiro plazovne fotodiode je bila dosežena
odzivnost sprejemnika 5.5 GV/W in razmerje SINAD več kot 20 dB.

Ključne besede: Optoelektronika; optični sprejemniki; plazovne fotodiode; optični vlakenski senzorji

* Corresponding Author’s e-mail: [email protected]

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1 Introduction 2 Receiver Circuit

A silicon avalanche photodiode (APD) is often used for The electrical schematic of the receiver circuit is shown
low-light detection in the visible and near-infrared re- in Figure 1. The optical signal is sensed with the APD
gions, due to its bias dependent internal gain and its connected to the input of the optical receiver in re-
ability to amplify the photogenerated signal by ava- verse-biasing. The transimpedance amplifier (TIA),
lanche multiplication [1-4]. Internal current gain is pro- which is based on a dual low-noise CMOS operational
vided in an APD because the photogenerated charge amplifier LTC6241, was used to convert the diode pho-
carriers are accelerated in the electrical field and pro- tocurrent into a voltage. The transimpedance gain
duce further electron-hole pairs through impact ioni- equal to 107 V/A was set with a thin-film 10 MΩ feed-
zation. This internal gain mechanism can improve the back resistor R10. A feedback capacitor C14 provides
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of an optical receiver which compensation for the effects of the input capacitance,
uses an APD instead of a PIN diode [5]. However, the in- and stabilizes the circuit [5, 7-9]. The voltage signal
creased sensitivity is limited by the level of excess noise from the TIA is then amplified with an AC‐coupled
generated by the avalanche process [6]. This additional post-amplifier, which removes the DC signal compo-
noise increases with the multiplication, and the opti- nent and provides output voltage level adjustment.
mum internal gain is achieved when the APD noise is The gain of the post-amplifier depends on the selected
approximately equal to the noise of the receiver circuit. APD, and is in a range between 37 V/V and 109 V/V. The
The excess noise generated by the avalanche process output signal from the post-amplifier is filtered with
also varies between different APDs and affects the a linear phase 10th order low-pass filter LTC1569-6 to
noise performance of a receiver circuit significantly. remove high-frequency noise. The cutoff frequency of
the filter is set with a single resistor R15 to 23.7 kHz.
In this paper we present the design of a highly sensi- The receiver power supply voltage is regulated with
tive silicon avalanche photodiode (APD) receiver for a 5 V linear regulator ADM7150, which provides high
low-light fiber-optical sensor applications. The receiver power supply rejection (>90 dB from 1 kHz to 1 MHz)
testing procedure, based on SINAD measure, is de- and ultralow output noise (<1.7 nV/√Hz).
scribed and used for optimization between APD multi-
plication and amplifier gain. The receivers with several The internal current gain of the APD depends on the
different APDs were compared and evaluated after the applied reverse bias voltage. Typically, reverse bias
gain optimization procedure. voltage for silicon APDs is between 80 V and 200 V.
Since the APD gain also varies with the temperature,
it is necessary to control the bias voltage to keep a sta-

C14 C15
+5V

0.2pF 0.5pF
R9
R10 R11 1R
10M 1M
D1

2 U4A C16
HVOUT
8

1 R13 6 U4B U5 P3
APD 3 27K 7 1 8
330nF IN+ OUT 1
C24 LTC6241HV 5
2
100nF LTC6241HV 2 7
IN- V+ +5V
4

+5V C18
HVRTN 100nF R15 C20
3 6
GND Rx 1uF
GND GND 27K
GND GND R16 4 5
V- DIV/CLK
4K7
REF GND LTC1569CS8-6 GND GND GND

R17
2K C22 C23 C21
10nF 100nF 1uF

GND GND GND GND

+12V +5V
U1
8 2
VIN VOUT
7 6
EN REF
3 5
1 BYP REF_SENSE
2
1 4
VREG GND
P1
C1 C2 C3 9 C4 C5
10uF 1uF 10uF EPAD 1uF 10uF
ADM7150ARDZ-5.0
GND GND GND GND GND GND GND

Figure 1: Electrical schematic of the receiver circuit (top) and power supply circuit (bottom).

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U2 U3
3 4 2 3 R1 R2 R3
+12V IN OUT (+) IN HV OUT HVOUT
R4 100K 100K 470K
5
C6 ADJ C7 C8 CNTRL P2
R5 1K
10uF 33uF 100nF C9 C10 C11
NCV1117 120R R6 1
1 470K 2 100nF 100nF 10pF
GND GND GND R7
470R
R8 1 4
C12 C13 (-) IN HV RTN HVRTN
52R3
33uF 22nF GND A02N-5

GND GND GND

Figure 2: Reverse bias voltage circuit.

ble gain [10]. The reverse bias voltage circuit is shown length range 800 nm to 950 nm. The APD3 is designed
in Figure 2. The reverse bias high voltage (HV) is pro- for operation at gains in the range 10 to 20, and can be
vided with an isolated 1 W miniature proportional DC operated at a fixed bias voltage without the need for
to HV DC converter module A02N-5 from XP Power. The temperature compensation. APD5 and APD6 were fiber
module converts 5 V voltage from voltage regulator U2 coupled at manufacture, while the rest have been put
into high output voltage with a value up to 200 V. The into an FC diode housing and filled with black epoxy
output voltage is set with control voltage applied to a resin.
high impedance control pin (CNTRL). This control pin
could also be used in closed loop temperature control
for APD gain stabilization. The module is loaded with
resistor R6 and low-pass RC filer, which also reduces
3 Results and discussion
output ripple and limits the current through the APD.
The measurement system setup shown in Figure 3 was
created for the testing of the presented receiver cir-
Receiver circuits with six different silicon APDs were
cuit. The fiber-optical sensor signal is simulated with a
assembled for testing. The low-pass filter and the con-
50/125 µm multimode fiber (MM) illuminated with an
verter module A02N-5 for reverse bias voltage are not
850 nm wavelength infrared emitter (IR LED) driven by
fitted on printed circuit boards (PCB) because they
a function generator. Forward current through the LED
are not necessary during the diode comparison test.
is reduced intentionally with an oversized 10 kΩ serial
The reverse bias voltage is obtained from two in series
resistor, in order to reduce the radiant intensity of the
connected high-voltage linear regulated laboratory
LED and, consequently, optical power from the multi-
power supplies PLH120-P from Aim-TTi. Typical APDs,
mode fiber (MM). The output of the function genera-
which are commercially available on the market, were
tor is set to sinewave voltage with DC voltage offset.
selected for this comparison. The characteristics of the
The optical power from the multimode fiber (MM) was
tested APDs are shown in Table 1. They provide high
measured with an Agilent 8153A lightwave multim-
multiplication gain and high responsivity in the wave-

Table 1: Electro-optical characteristics of tested APDs.

Parameter Unit APD1 APD2 APD3 APD4 APD5 APD6

Wavelength range nm 550-1050 400-1100 600-1050 400-1100 400-1100 400-1100
Active area µm 500 500 500 230 230 230
diameter
Responsivity A/W 50 62 7.6 (M=15) 50 60 59
(850 nm, M=100)
Breakdown V 150-300 150-400 350 120-160 160-240 120-160
voltage
Capacitance pF 2 1.5 1 1.5 1 0.6
Dark current nA 1 1.5 20 0.05 0.5 0.05
Noise current pA/√Hz 0.2 0.4 0.1 - - -
Manufacturer Laser Com- Laser Com- Excelitas Marktech Op- Shengshi Shenzhen
ponents ponents toelectronics Optical* Yigudian
Part number SAE500NX SAR500X C30724PH MTAPD-06-003 SAP- GSAPD9-230
5001M510
* Using silicon from First Sensor AD230-9 TO52S1

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eter equipped with an optical head interface module top graph shows the spectrum obtained with optimal
HP 81533B and optical head HP 81520A. The analog 140 V reverse bias voltage applied to the APD, but with-
output of the optical head interface module was con- out an optical signal. This spectrum displays the uni-
nected to a digital oscilloscope for measurement of form noise contributed mainly by the TIA circuit, and
the instantaneous optical power signal. The sinewave depends on the TIA gain determined with feedback
peak-to-peak value and DC offset on the function resistance. The middle graph shows the spectrum after
generator were changed until the same signal was ob- applying the simulated fiber-optical sensor signal with
tained on the oscilloscope as from the real fiber-optical 10 kHz sinewave frequency, as described at beginning
sensor. The average optical power measured with the of the session. For the clarity of the noise floor the mag-
Agilent 8153A lightwave multimeter was 320 pW, and nitude scale of the graph is limited and therefore the
the peak-to-peak sinewave instant power measured on fundamental spectral component of the signal and its
the analog output was 90 pW. The sinewave frequency second harmonic are cut-off at 1.5 mV. The second har-
was set to 100 Hz during the instant power measure- monic is due to nonlinearity of the source and has neg-
ment, because the bandwidth limitation of the power ligible influence on the results. In addition to uniform
meter’s analog output. noise, the APD noise contribution was evident, and the
SINAD obtained with this multiplication gain was 14.9
Power Oscilloscope dB. The further increase of multiplication gain wors-
meter
IR ened the SINAD, because the excess noise increased
Function
LED APD
Post
faster than the receiver output sinewave amplitude.
generator
10K
MM
TIA ampli er LPF SINAD This is shown in the bottom graph, where the reverse
850 nm Fiber
Reverse
bias voltage is 175 V, the receiver output sinewave am-
bias voltage plitude is 0.9 V, but the SINAD drops to 12.8 dB.
Receiver circuit

Figure 3: Block diagram of the receiver circuit test sys-

tem.

The LabVIEW based spectrum analyzer with signal-to-

noise and distortion ratio (SINAD) measurement was
designed for the noise evaluation. The receiver output
signal was digitized with the National Instruments (NI)
multifunction DAQ card NI PCI-6251, which has a 16-
bit analog to digital converter. The sample rate was
set to 1 MS/s, and one million samples were acquired
to achieve 1 Hz frequency resolution within a spectral
band from DC to 500 kHz. The Spectral Measurements
and Distortion Measurements (SINAD) Express VIs were
used for signal analysis.

The receiver circuit bandwidth is determined with

feedback resistance and capacitance, the junction ca-
pacitance of the APD and the operational amplifier
gain bandwidth product [9]. The transimpedance gain
for each tested receiver circuit was increased with the
TIA feedback resistor until the bandwidth of 50 kHz was
obtained. The maximum useful gain in APDs is limited
by the excess noise generated by the stochastic nature
of the avalanche multiplication process. This noise de-
grades the overall SINAD of the receiver circuit at high
gain values, and, therefore, the reverse bias voltage
was increased until the optimum multiplication gain
had been achieved. After the optimum multiplication
gain for a particular APD had been found, the gain of
the post-amplifier was fine-tuned until reaching a 250 Figure 4: Spectral measurement results for the receiver
mV output amplitude. Figure 4 shows spectral meas- circuit with APD1. Top - without optical signal, middle -
urement results for the receiver circuit with APD1. The with optimal gain, bottom - with high gain.

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The same optimization procedure was applied to all The complete receiver circuit with low-pass filter and
six receiver circuits, and the comparison results are the converter module A02N-5 was tested after the
shown in Figure 5. The SINAD rise with the reverse diode comparison test. The measurement results for
bias voltage to some maximum value, and then be- APD1 are shown in Figure 6. The top waveform graph
gan to fall, because the avalanche noise then started displays the receiver output sinewave with frequency
to increase faster than the signal. Although the tested 10 kHz, and 500 mV peak-to-peak value obtained from
APDs have similar electro-optical characteristics, the the optical sinewave signal with 90 pW peak-to-peak
achieved maximum SINAD depends highly on the APD instant power value, while the bottom graph displays
used. Also, the narrow characteristic with fast SINAD the frequency spectrum. The low-pass filter removes
increase and decline around the maximum is incon- high-frequency noise and the SINAD of the complete
venient, since it requires precise reverse bias voltage receiver circuit is 20.5 dB.
control. The flattest characteristic was obtained with
APD3, which is designed for operation at lower gains,
but the obtained maximum SINAD was 3.5 dB lower
than the best achieved result. This is because the lower
4 Conclusion
multiplication gain must be compensated with higher
The presented receiver circuit is able to amplify low-
post-amplifier’s gain. The best result was obtained with
level fiber optical sensor signals with optical power
APD1, which has moderate flat characteristic and the
less than 100 pW to voltage level, which is then suit-
highest SINAD of 14.9 dB.
able for analog to digital conversion and further digi-
APD1 APD2 APD3 APD4 APD5 APD6 tal signal processing. The measurement results show
16 that relatively significant differences in SINAD were
14
obtained with apparently very similar APDs. Further-
12
more, to maximize SINAD for selected APD at a given
SINAD [dB]

10
8 target total receiver gain, an optimum setting exists be-
6 tween diodes’ internal gain and transimpedance gain.
4
Unfortunately, these optimum settings are usually not
determinable from the typical specification parameters
2
0
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 230 240 that are given by APD suppliers, but rather need to be
Reverse bias voltage [V] determined experimentally.
Figure 5: Comparison results for receiver circuits with
With an optimally selected APD, the receiver responsiv-
different APDs.
ity 5.5 GV/W was obtained at avalanche multiplication
M=18 and amplifier gain 370 MV/A. Higher avalanche
multiplication generates too much excess noise com-
pared to the noise due to increased amplifier gain
which is then required to get the same output voltage
level. After diode selection and gain optimization, the
achieved SINAD of receiver circuit with high order low-
pass filter was 20.5 dB. Further improvements of SINAD
for some low-frequency fiber-optical sensor applica-
tions are possible with averaging of multiple sinewave
periods, or with single tone extraction.

5 Acknowledgements
This work was part of the project »Ecological Safe Ve-
hicle for green mobility - EVA4green«, which was co-
financed by the Republic of Slovenia and the European
Union under the European Regional Development
Fund.

Figure 6: Measurement results for the complete receiv-

er circuit with APD1. Top – receiver output waveform,
bottom – frequency spectrum.

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