Design and characterization of 0.13 µm CMOS and BiCMOS low noise transimpedance amplifiers for high speed optical interconnects

A set of low noise transimpedance amplifiers manufactured and characterized in CMOS and BiCMOS technologies is proposed in this work. Layout optimization, efficient modelling and bias point optimization are the techniques employed to reduce the input noise current density. The CMOS amplifiers were designed to work at 10 Gbps. The BiCMOS amplifiers, based on HBT transistors, can operate at bit rates higher than 25 Gbps. To the best of our knowledge, the broadband amplifiers proposed in this work have the lowest input noise current density compared to other 0.13 μm designs.