Design and Assessment of a Circuit and Layout Level Radiation Hardened CMOS VCSEL Driver

The radiation hard design of a 155 Mb/s, 0.7 mum CMOS driver for a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is presented. The circuit features enhanced tolerance to radiation induced shifts in the device characteristics by employing a replica-based feedback mechanism. The layout was achieved using an in-house developed radiation hardened component library. At a low dose rate of 4.5 Gy/h or 450 rad/h, the output current remains constant up to at least 3.5 kGy. At a dose rate of 21 kGy/h, the output current of the driver drops by 10% at a dose of 3.5 MGy and breaks down completely at 5.5 MGy.