Bandwidth Enhancement With Low Group-Delay Variation for a 40-Gb/s Transimpedance Amplifier

Abstract

A 40-Gb/s transimpedance amplifier (TIA) is proposed using multistage inductive-series peaking for low group-delay variation. A transimpedance limit for multistage TIAs is derived, and a bandwidth-enhancement technique using inductive-series π -networks is analyzed. A design method for low group delay constrained to 3-dB bandwidth enhancement is suggested. The TIA is implemented in a 0.13-μm CMOS process and achieves a 3-dB bandwidth of 29 GHz. The transimpedance gain is 50 dB·Ω , and the transimpedance group-delay variation is less than 16 ps over the 3-dB bandwidth. The chip occupies an area of 0.4 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , including the pads, and consumes 45.7 mW from a 1.5-V supply. The measured TIA demonstrates a transimpedance figure of merit of 200.7 Ω/pJ.