High-speed photodiode signal enhancement at avalanche breakdown voltage

Abstract
It has previously been found that when photons are injected into a photodiode biased to the avalanche region, that there is a multiplication of the signal over the usual bias-voltage signal level. This multiplication is due to the created electron-hole pairs colliding with the lattice and creating more electron-hole pairs under the influence of the large biasing field. This paper presents a circuit analysis of this effect when using a high-speed silicon (Si) P-I-N photodiode and shows what the SNR bandwidth and Noise Equivalent Power (NEP) are under both normal bias conditions and avalanche bias conditions. It is shown that there is a substantial improvement in the NEP and SNR ratio at high frequencies when operating at avalanche so that the device may be made nearly shot noise limited if the multiplication factorMis sufficiently large. Microwave measurements on such a high-speed diode gave gains greater than 30 dB with a SNR improvement of 13 dB at 1.45 Gc/s. The effect was observed at frequencies as high as 2.54 Gc/s and appeared to follow a linear 1/M law with bias voltage in the avalanche region with some deviation at large values ofM. The device SNR ratio at moderately high light levels is determined by the signal-to-shot noise ratio. A high modulation depth is found to be essential to reduce shot noise. Analysis of the diode circuit reveals that the detected signal power bandwidth product is a constant. The NEP is found to vary directly with the bandwidth in a pulse type system. Avalanche operation increases the signal power by M2and decreases the NEP byMat high frequencies. The photodiode appears to nearly provide the solid-state analog of the photomultiplier tube.