A 10 Gb/s AlGaAs/GaAs HBT high power fully differential limiting distributed amplifier for III-V Mach-Zehnder modulator

High power, high frequency linear distributed amplifiers are available commercially which provide high power single-ended drive capability from a single-ended source. The signal source can be either analog or digital. Such amplifiers must have stringent gain and phase response requirement over a wide bandwidth in order to maintain good eye quality of the signal. A limiting amplifier, with less stringent bandwidth requirement than analog amplifiers, can be used to amplify pure digital signal source. The purpose of this paper is to present a high power, fully differential limiting distributed amplifier operating at 10 Gb/s. The amplifier has been fabricated with both AlGaAs/GaAs and InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) processes. The amplifier is designed to drive any 50 /spl Omega/ system. In particular, this amplifier is intended to drive a III-V Mach-Zehnder modulator.