A high performance wide-band CMOS transimpedance amplifier for optical transceivers

This paper describes a novel low noise CMOS current feed-back transimpedance amplifier using a low-cost Agilent 0.5 /spl mu/m 3M2p CMOS process technology. The bandwidth of the amplifier was extended using inductive peaking technique and simulation results indicated a -3 dB bandwidth of 3.5 GHz with a transimpedance gain of /spl ap/ 60 dB ohms. The dynamic range of the amplifier was high enough to enable an output voltage swing of around 400 mV for a test input current of 100 /spl mu/A. The output noise voltage spectral density was 12 nV/sqrt(Hz) (with a peak of /spl ap/ 25 nV/sqrt(Hz)), while the input referred noise current spectral density was below 20 pA/sqrt(Hz) within the amplifier frequency band.