Very-high-speed InP/InGaAs HBT ICs for optical transmission systems

High-speed ICs for 20-40-Gbit/s time-division multiplexing (TDM) optical transmission systems have been designed and fabricated by using InP/InGaAs heterojunction-bipolar-transistor (HBT) technology. This paper describes four analog ICs and four digital ICs: a five-section cascode distributed amplifier with a gain of 9.5 dB and a bandwidth of 50 GHz, a three-section single-end-to-differential converter with a bandwidth of 40 GHz, a cascode differential amplifier with a gain of 10.5 dB and a bandwidth of 64 GHz, a preamplifier with a gain of 41.9 dB/spl Omega/ and a bandwidth of 39 GHz, a modulator driver with an output voltage swing of 3.2 V peak-to-peak and rise and fall times of 16 and 15 ps, a 40-Gbit/s selector, a 20-Gbit/s D-type flip-flop, and a static frequency divider with an operating range of 2.0-44.0 GHz. All the ICs were measured with on-wafer RF probes.