A 56-Gb/s Optical Receiver With 2.08-μA Noise Monolithically Integrated into a 250-nm SiGe BiCMOS Technology
Giannino Dziallas, Adel Fatemi, Anna Pęczek, Lars Zimmermann, Andrea Malignaggi, Gerhard Kahmen
Abstract
In this article, a monolithically integrated single-polarization optical receiver with automatic gain control is presented that shows state-of-the-art performance in terms of bandwidth (BW) and noise. A low-noise technique is applied in a monolithically integrated optical receiver featuring automatic gain and dc-offset cancellation control loops. The electronic and photonic components are fabricated on the same silicon substrate using IHP’s 0.25- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> SiGe BiCMOS EPIC technology. The optical receiver features a high tunable transimpedance gain of 66 dB <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> at a large optoelectrical BW of 34 GHz and an input-referred noise current of 2.08 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{A}_{\text {rms}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> while consuming only 205 mW of power.