8 Gbits/s inductorless transimpedance amplifier in 90 nm CMOS technology

• DOI: 10.1007/s10470-013-0242-4
• Publication Date: 2013-12-22T00:18:37Z
• Authors: Mohamed Atef; Francisco Aznar; Stefan Schidl; Andreas Polzer; Wolfgang Gaberl; Horst Zimmermann
• Keywords: Transimpedance amplifier; Fully differential amplifier; Photodiode; Current mirror

This work presents the design and the measured performance of a 8 Gb/s transimpedance amplifier (TIA) fabricated in a 90 nm CMOS technology. The introduced TIA uses an inverter input stage followed by two common-source stages with a 1.5 k? feedback resistor. The TIA is followed by a single-ended to differential converter stage, a differential amplifier and a 50 Ω differential output driver to provide an interface to the measurement setup. The optical receiver shows a measured optical sensitivity of ?18.3 dBm for a bit error rate = 10?9. A gain control circuitry is integrated with the TIA to increase its input photo-current dynamic range (DR) to 32 dB. The TIA has an input photo-current range from 12 to 500 μA without overloading. The stability is guaranteed over the whole DR. The optical receiver achieves a transimpedance gain of 72 dBΩ and 6 GHz bandwidth with 0.3 pF total input capacitance for the photodiode and input PAD. The TIA occupies 0.0036 mm2 whereas the complete optical receiver occupies a chip area of 0.46 mm2. The power consumption of the TIA is only 12 mW from a 1.2 V single supply voltage. The complete chip dissipates 60 mW where a 1.6 V supply is used for the output stages.