EEWeb.com will feature this site as the site-of-the-day tomorrow Thursday! Their circuit simulator at www.partsim.com looks interesting:
Month: February 2013
PD-Amps compared
The first design is a single transimpedance-amplifier (TIA) using an ADA4817 and a 1 MOhm resistor. This isn't a great design, since the op-amp is much too fast compared to what is needed/required here. The second design is a 7 kOhm TIA (AD8597) followed by a ~140 V/V gain non-inverting amp (ADA4817). This gives the same total effective gain of ~1 MOhm.
These circuits were designed for a 2 V output with a 2 uA photocurrent produced by about 5 uW of HeNe laser light at 633 nm. The output will hit the "roof" (the positive rail) at about 12 uW of optical power.
The agreement between simulation and experiment is not very good. I suspect my extremely simple LED-test is to blame. I should build a VCSEL circuit which allows testing these and other photodiode receivers to much higher frequencies.
PD-Amp v.2 assembled and tested
I assembled and tested the latest photodiode-amp today. I tested the frequency response using a red LED driven directly by an Agilent function-generator with an offset of 1.2 V and a 600 mVpp sine-wave. The LED datasheet doesn't specify a rise-time or bandwidth, but I'm hoping it is fast enough to test this 2-3 MHz receiver. I do have some small VCSELs that should be very fast and suitable for testing photodiode receivers up to 500 MHz and beyond.
The signal from the LED caused a 3 V output swing, which explains the slightly lower observed (large-signal) bandwidth compared to the simulated (small-signal) bandwidth. Some of the difference between the simulated frequency-response and the measured one is probably explained by stray capacitance which slightly lowers the bandwidth.
Photodiode amplifier - version 2
A revised version of the circuit and PCB for a photodiode amplifier, to be used in PDH-locking (Pound-Drever-Hall) as well as RAM-nulling (residual amplitude modulation) in a laser experiment I am doing. The changes compared to the first prototype are:
- The required bandwidth and gain is not easy to achieve in one stage, so there's a second stage of amplification after the transimpedance amplifier.
- I'm suspicious of the noise caused by the switched-mode powersupply, as well as the DC2DC converter, of the previous design. So this circuit has just +/-5 V regulators and can be driven from a regular (known good) +/-12 V lab powersupply (or even two 9 V batteries).
Here is a schematic and simulation results produced with the free version of NI Multisim from Analog Devices. The design is for roughly 1 MOhm of transimpedance gain in total, here split between 7 kV/A transimpedance gain, and 144 V/V for the non-inverting second op-amp. At 1 kV/A of transimpedance gain a 5 uW optical signal at 633 nm (HeNe laser!) that produces a 2 uA photocurrent will result in a 2 V output signal. The AC analysis shows very slight gain-peaking for the transimpedance-stage (red trace) and a -3 dB bandwidth of >3 MHz overall (green trace).
The first op-amp used in the transimpedance stage only needs to have a bandwidth slightly exceeding the transimpedance gain bandwidth (the feedback resistor R1 together with the compensating cap C1, the capacitance of the photodiode C2, and the input-capacitance (not shown) of the op-amp form an RC low-pass filter). The AD8597 is marketed as "ultralow distortion/noise" and is fast enough (10 MHz). The second non-inverting op-amp needs a high gain-bandwidth-product (GBP) since we are amplifying ~100-fold here. The ADA4817 has a small-signal bandwidth of 1 GHz and GBP~400 MHz, so should work OK here.
A voltage of only 14 mV over the transimpedance-resistor is not ideal. The Johnson noise (which in principle a good designer can control/minimize) in the resistor will dominate over the shot noise (which we cannot avoid) in the optical signal. For shot-noise limited performance the rule of thumb is to make the voltage drop at least 51 mV (which will make Johnson and shot noise equal). Without tricks however that is not possible as here we have both a weak signal (2 uA of photocurrent), we want a high gain (1 kV/A in total), and we want to go fast (~3 MHz bandwidth)! If you relax any of those requirements (more power, less gain, slower response) it is straightforward to build a shot-noise limited amplifier in one or two stages.
The PCB, fresh from the mill:
Far right is a 3-pin TO-18 socket for the photodiode. Right-middle are the two op-amps with their feedback-resistors/caps, as well as two de-coupling caps for both +5V and -5V. Left-middle are 7805 and 7905 voltage regulators, and the BNC output-connector is far left. All the surface mount components are mounted on the top layer of the board, while the through-hole components are bottom-mounted. Resistors and caps are 1206-size. This PCB should fit the earlier enclosures I turned on the lathe.
Hopefully I will have time to assemble and test one or two of these next week. I should measure the actual frequency-response and compare it with the simulated one.