A Monolithic-Integrated Broadband Low-Noise Optical Receiver with Automatic Gain Control in 0.25μm SiGe BiCMOS

In this paper we present a broadband low-noise monolithic-integrated silicon photonic receiver with automatic gain control that shows state-of-the-art performance. The electronic and photonic components are fabricated monolithically on one chip using IHP’s 0.25μm SiGe BiCMOS EPIC technology. The optical receiver features a high tunable transimpedance gain of 66 dBW at a large opto-electrical BW of 34 GHz and an input-referred noise current of 2.81 μA rms while consuming 205 mW of power. Comparing key performance metrics and the functional complexity of similar devices found in the literature, the optical receiver presented in this work achieves an overall superior performance.