Linearity improvement of high-speed avalanche photodiodes using thin depleted absorber operating with higher order modulation format

We present an avalanche photodiode (APD) with high-speed, high-responsivity and high-linearity operation to cope with higher order modulation format, such as pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM). A hybrid absorber configuration with thin depleted region which we newly employed successfully eliminates the space charge effect in the APD while maintaining high responsivity and operating speed. The fabricated APD shows an improved optical-input-electrical-output linearity for an optical input power over -8 dBm, and an optical receiver with this APD achieves both an error-free operation with a KP4 FEC and a high sensitivity of -17 dBm against a 28-Gbaud PAM4 signal.