The BER theoretical model and properties of SiPM‐based receiver for OOK optical communication

Summary The bit error rate (BER) theory of silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) based on‐off keying optical communication receiver, which introduces photon equivalent threshold is established. The optical crosstalk effect, the dark counts, the amplitude fluctuations of output pulses of SiPM, the baseline fluctuation, the shape of the incident light pulse, the adjacent symbol interference as well as the photon detection efficiency (PDE) are considered in the theory model. The numerical result shows that the average minimum optical power required is much smaller than that of the avalanche photodiode‐based receivers under the same conditions. The BER of SiPM‐based optical communication receiver is very sensitive to the PDE and optical crosstalk (OC) probability of SiPM. For the application of digital optical communication, a SiPM with high PDE but low OC probability and low dark count rate is a preference, under the premise that the output pulse is fast enough. For the state‐of‐the‐art SiPMs, the dark count rate is small enough to obtain adequate BER, and the OC effect is not a big limitation of the performance of SiPM‐based receiver. Moreover, the amplitude fluctuation and the baseline fluctuation of the SiPM‐based receiver are not bottlenecks of the performance in practice. The bit error rate (BER) theory of silicon photomultiplier‐based on‐off keying optical communication receiver is established. The numerical result shows that the average minimum optical power required is much smaller than that of the avalanche photodiode‐based receivers under the same conditions. This figure shows the dependence of the BER on photon detection efficiency and optical crosstalk probability (pct). Here, the number of incident photons needed is only 261.5 per bit. It clearly shows that 10−9 BER can be easily obtained when the optical crosstalk probability is lower than about 5%.