High-speed photoreceivers using solder bumps and microstrip lines formed on a silicon optical bench

Abstract

High-speed photoreceiver modules using silicon optical benches are described. These modules employ solder bumps for chip assembly and microstrip lines for electrical signal transmission. The assembly and wiring technologies are the same as those used in the planar lightwave circuit platforms we developed. A photoreceiver module consisting of a waveguide photodiode showed a very wide bandwidth greater than 20 GHz, and together with a spotsize-converted semiconductor optical amplifier, operated as an optical preamplifier that showed good receiver sensitivity of -20.3 dBm at 10 Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero.