Design of an Inverter-Base, Active-Feedback, Low-Power Transimpedance Amplifier Operating at 10 Gbps

Abstract

In this paper, a low-power structure as an inverter-base circuit is reported for broadband applications. The focus in this study is in obtaining a low-power structure. By applying cascoded structure to an inverter as a feedforward network in the structure, the DC current and hence the power dissipation are decreased. Also, by adding a two-stage active feedback, which yields no miller capacitance, to the cascoded inverter, the structure of the TIA is completed. Simulation results in HSPICE using 90[Formula: see text]nm CMOS technology parameters show 41[Formula: see text]dB[Formula: see text] transimpedance gain, 6.5[Formula: see text]GHz frequency bandwidth and 2.7[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]Arms input referred noise, which consumes only 1.67[Formula: see text]mw power at 1[Formula: see text]V supply. Results and analysis indicate that the proposed TIA is suitable to work as a low-power 10 Gbps transimpedance amplifier in an optical receiver.

A Multi-Stage TIA based on Cascoded-Inverter Structures for Low-power Applications

“…Also, as our design does not use passive elements (inductors) and employs smaller technologies, the occupied chip area is considerably low. Moreover, in comparison with our previous work [9], a slightly higher gain and slightly less noise is obtained in cost of less bandwidth and slightly higher power-consumption. However, in order to provide a fair comparison, two Figure of Merits (FOMs) [30] are defined in Table IV, as follows: (46)…”