[Laser] Spice model for photodiode?

Art [email protected]
Wed, 25 Feb 2004 08:07:23 -0500


Good day all,

I'm a new spice user and for my first project, I wanted to model the K3PGP 
photodiode preamp, especially the daylight version. I'm interested in this 
because it appears that the majority of the sensitivity goes away due to 
the dark version components effectively shunting the photodiode.

Burr-Brown has an ap note on daylight use of their opt210 integrated 
photodiode/amp chips. They use a very large series resistor and the full 
vcc to feed small currents into the op amp, which correct for the daylight 
ambient light. After the output of the photodiode amp goes to zero in the 
presence of ambient light, it is maintained there by another op amp that 
monitors the output voltage and attempts to hold it there-except it has a 
longer time constant (narrower bandwidth) than the desired reception 
frequency-so it is always nudging the output in the right direction, but 
never quite 'catches up'. In effect, the daylight cancelling electronics is 
variable and constantly correcting. Burr-Brown says the sensitivity lost is 
'minimal'.

I think the ability to make daylight QSO's without a severe loss in 
sensitivity would be a good thing!

Does anyone have a spice model for a photodiode or know where I can get one?

Thanks,

Art