A 1 GHz CMOS transimpedance amplifier for chip-to-chip optical interconnects

A CMOS transimpedance amplifier (TIA) has been designed and tested for cost effective chip-to-chip optical interconnects. The amplifier is based on a foundry standard CMOS technology which features 0.8 /spl mu/m drawn channel length, double-poly capacitors and poly-Si resistors. Measurements showed a transimpedance gain of 48 dB/spl Omega/ over a -3 dB bandwidth of DC-1 GHz and a power consumption of 80 mW when biased at +5 V and AC coupled to the load. The biasing circuitry consumes an additional 52 mW. The mean input referred noise current density was calculated to be 7.4pA//spl radic/Hz, which results in an input optical sensitivity of -25.7 dBm for a BER of 10/sup -9/. The experimental results verify to a great extent the expected transmission rate of up to 1.8 Gbps.