Characterization of ultrafast InGaAs photoconductors and their application to signal processing in radio-over-fibre telecommunications

Abstract

Characterization of nitrogen ion implanted InGaAs photoconductive devices is performed in both the electronic and optoelectronic regime. In the dark state, the optoelectronic device shows a dark resistance of a few kΩ and a wide electrical bandwidth in the RF domain. This large bandwidth is also confirmed in the illuminated state, optoelectronic autocorrelation experiments performed with ultra-short optical pulses allow us to measure the picosecond optoelectronic time response of the device. In the second part of the work, we investigate the potentiality of this component to be used in the photonic assisted heterodyne detection of RF modulated carriers for radio-over-fibre telecommunications. We demonstrate that this photoconductor, thanks to its properties, can be used to demodulate complex data modulation formats in such an experiment.