Modeling of photodetectors for microwave and high-power applications

We present in this paper the results of two different modelings of photodetectors. The first is based on FD-BPM and presents the study of a waveguide PIN photodetector structure grown on InP substrate. It gives the possible cut-off frequency for such a photodetector. The second one is a modeling of a conventional PIN photodiode including the effects of the external circuit. The goal of this modeling is to analyze the behavior of the photodetector under very high optical power. We considered the case of an optical signal sinusoidally modulated at 20GHz and analyzed the output photocurrent in order to give the limitations of the photodetector.