Applied Electro-Optics

13 Optical Receivers

Photodiodes are manufactured to be used in a large number of applications. They are available in numerous configurations to meet the particular application. The specific applications and device configurations are too numerous to mention here, so we will begin our study with a general purpose silicon pin photodiode used as a receiver element. Silicon pin photodiodes are available in a wide range of active areas to meet the required light collection specification of a receiver design. Applications such as position sensing require multiple pin photodiode elements in more than one package. Photodiodes are also available in arrays of 50 or more elements for applications such as spectroscopy. Whatever the application may be, certain ...