This paper presents a low noise, 1.25Gb/s and 124dBΩ front-end amplifier that is designed and fabricated in 0.25μm CMOS technology for optical communication applications. Active inductor shunt peaking technology and noise optimization are used in the design of a trans-impedance amplifier,which overcomes the problem of inadequate bandwidth caused by the large parasitical capacitor of the CMOS photodiode. Experimental results indicate that with a parasitical capacitance of 2pF,this circuit works at 1.25Gb/s. A clear eye diagram is obtained with an input optical signal of - 17dBm. With a power supply of 3.3V, the front-end amplifier consumes 122mW and provides a 660mV differential output.
This paper presents a 12-channel,30Gb/s front-end amplifier realized in standard 0.18μm CMOS technology for parallel optlc-fiber receivers. In order to overcome the problem of inadequate bandwidth caused by the large parasitical capacitor of CMOS photo-detectors,a regulated-cascode structure and noise optimization are used in the design of the transimpedance amplifier. The experimental results indicate that, with a parasitical capacitance of 2pF,a single channel is able to work at bite rates of up to 2.5Gb/s,and a clear eye diagram is obtained with a 0. 8mVpp input. Furthermore, an isolation structure combined with a p^+ guard.ring (PGR), an n^+ guard-ring (NGR),and a deep-n-well (DNW) for parallel amplifier is also presented. Taking this combined structure, the crosstalk and the substrate noise coupling have been effectively reduced. Compared with the isolation of PGR or PGR + NGR,the measured results show that the isolation degree of this structure is improved by 29.2 and 8. ldB at 1GHz,and by 8. 1 and 2. 5dB at 2GHz,respectively. With a 1.8V supply,each channel of the front-end amplifier consumes a DC power of 85mW,and the total power consumption of 12 channels is about 1W.