High‐speed transimpedance amplifier with runtime adaptive bandwidth and power consumption in 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS. Issue 2 (1st January 2016) - Schoeniger, D.
Abstract : A high‐speed transimpedance amplifier (TIA) implemented in 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS with a novel bandwidth and power consumption tuning approach is presented. By tuning the circuit bandwidth continuously from 61.6 to 12.8 GHz during runtime, the power consumption of the main amplifier can be reduced by a factor of around 5. Leading to a power consumption reduction of 40% for the TIA core. Despite the power reduction the gain is kept constant at 69.8 dBΩ by utilising field effect transistors as steerable resistors. The high maximum bandwidth admits data rates up to more than 88 Gbit/s with a power consumption of only 78.1 mW. This yields to a very good energy efficiency of 0.888 pJ/bit and a very high gain bandwidth product of 189.8 kΩGHz at the same time. The mentioned performance parameters in conjunction with the bandwidth and power consumption scalability make the TIA well suited for energy‐efficient high‐speed optical interconnects, e.g. in future high performance computing platforms.