A 16Gbps laser-diode driver with interwoven peaking inductors in 0.18-µm CMOS

A laser-diode (LD) driver with interwoven mutually-coupled peaking inductors for high-speed optical networks is presented. Six and four inductors are interwoven into two sets of inductors for area-effective implementation as well as performance enhancement. The proposed circuit is fabricated in CMOS 0.18-μm process. The circuit area is 0.34mm² and the maximum operating speed is 16Gbps. Compared to a conventional LD driver in 0.18-μm CMOS, the proposed circuit achieves 1.6 times faster operation, 26% smaller area with 60% reduction in power consumption under the condition for the same amount of data transmission and the LD driving current.