0.3–42.5 GHz wideband common emitter amplifier driver unit in 55 nm SiGe BiCMOS for 60 Gb/s silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder Modulator

A silicon integrated wideband common emitter amplifier driver unit in 55 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology designed for a 60 Gb/s silicon photonic segmented Mach-Zehnder Modulator (SE-MZM) is reported in this paper. It achieves a bandwidth of 42.2 GHz (0.3-42.5 GHz), allowing the transmission of an On-Off Keying (OOK) modulated optical signal on a single optical channel with a data rate of up to 60 Gb/s. For a power consumption of 125 mW, it provides a small signal gain of 18 dB and a single-ended peak-to-peak output voltage swing of up to 1.1 V on a 50 Ω output load. The die active area is as small as 204 × 137 μm².