Comparison of simulation and experimental measurements of avalanche photodiode receiver performance

Experimental measurements of direct detection receiver sensitivity for state of the art radiation hardened silicon avalanche photodiodes are compared with simulation results and show excellent agreement, generally within less than 0.25 dB. It is shown that for low preamp thermal noise and zero source laser extinction ratio, the McIntyre gain statistics of the APD result in receiver sensitivity as much as 2 dB better than predicted by Gaussian statistics. However, for larger preamp noise and finite laser extinction ratios there is very little difference between Gaussian and McIntyre sensitivity predictions. A binary PPM receiver sensitivity of -52 dBm for 10 exp -6 bit error rate at 220 Mbps was measured with a laser extinction ratio of 13.2 percent, corresponding to 102 photoelectrons per bit.