Optical Fiber Communications 4th Edition by Gerd Keiser

Exercise 2

In avalanche photodiodes the ionization ratio k is approximately 0.02 for silicon, 0.35 for indium gallium arsenide, and 1.0 for germanium. Show that, for gains up to 100 in Si and up to 25 in InGaAs and Ge, the excess noise factor F ( M ) given by Eq. (7.3) can be approximated to within 10 percent by M x , where x is 0.3 for Si, 0.7 for InGaAs, and 1.0 for Ge.