Highly integrated InP HBT optical receivers

This paper presents two highly integrated receiver circuits fabricated in InP heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology operating at up to 2.5 and 7.5 Gb/s, respectively. The first IC is a generic digital receiver circuit with CMOS-compatible outputs. It integrates monolithically an automatic-gain-control amplifier, a digital clock and data recovery circuit, and a 1:8 demultiplexer, and consumes an extremely low 340 mW of power at 3.3 V, including output buffers. It can realize a full optical receiver when connected to a photo detector/preamplifier front end. The second circuit is a complete multirate optical receiver application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that integrates a photodiode, a transimpedance amplifier, a limiting amplifier, a digital clock and data recovery circuit, a 1:10 demultiplexer, and the asynchronous-transfer-mode-compatible word synchronization logic. It is the most functionally complex InP HBT optoelectronic integrated circuit reported to date. A custom package has also been developed for this ASIC.