Optisystem Simulation of Cost-Effective PIN-TIA Design for 1 GBPS Achieving Near-APD BER

Alhussain Elshrief; Khaled Dadesh

doi:10.66411/jer.v41i2.422

Authors

Alhussain Elshrief Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tripoli, Libya Author
Khaled Dadesh Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tripoli, Libya Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.66411/jer.v41i2.422

Keywords:

APD, PIN photodiode, transimpedance amplifier (TIA), free-space optics (FSO), BER, Q-factor, receiver sensitivity, shot noise, excess noise factor, thermal noise, OptiSystem

Abstract

Selecting the right photodetector front-end is one of the most consequential engineering decisions in free-space optical (FSO) system design. Avalanche photodiodes (APDs) deliver substantial sensitivity improvements through internal multiplication gain, yet their demanding high-voltage bias requirements and temperature-dependent gain introduce cost and complexity that are often difficult to justify in moderate-distance links. PIN photodiodes occupy the opposite extreme—simple, inexpensive, and entirely free of excess multiplication noise—but their performance degrades sharply as received power falls and thermal noise begins to dominate. This paper investigates whether a PIN photodiode paired with a transimpedance amplifier (PIN–TIA) can bridge that gap: recovering much of the APD's sensitivity advantage while preserving the simplicity and low cost of a PIN-based front-end. Three receiver topologies are compared for a 1 Gbps FSO link—APD, standalone PIN, and PIN–TIA—using a rigorous noise-budget derivation and a controlled OptiSystem simulation in which all three branches share the same received optical signal through an identical-loss optical coupler. Bit error rate (BER) is evaluated over a link-distance sweep from 6 km to 12 km at 1 dB/km and over a responsivity sweep at fixed 6 dB attenuation. Across both sweep dimensions, the PIN–TIA tracks the APD BER curve closely and outperforms the standalone PIN by a substantial margin, establishing it as a compelling cost-effective alternative for near-APD performance in practical 1 Gbps FSO deployments.

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