Integrated balanced mixer receiver on InP

The authors present a balanced mixer receiver OEIC (optoelectronic integrated circuit) comprising an optical mixer, a balanced detector, and a low-noise electrical preamplifier stage. A current gain of 13 dB and a 3 dB bandwidth of 900 MHz were obtained. A low equivalent input noise current density of 8 pA/ square root Hz and a high direct detection sensitivity of 26.7 dBm were demonstrated. A common mode rejection ratio of -30 dB was measured over the entire receiver bandwidth, which assures efficient local laser noise suppression for coherent receiver applications.