An 8 × 10 Gbps parallel single-chip light-to-logic converter

Abstract

An 8 × 10 Gbps direct light-to-logic converter for hybrid mounted Ge photodiodes is presented. The receiver is realized in standard 0.35 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology and the Ge photodetector is directly mounted on the top of the CMOS wafer. Each of the 8 channels includes a transimpedance amplifier, limiting amplifier stages and a 50 Ω CML output driver. The overall transimpedance is 275 kΩ and at a data rate of 10 Gpbs a sensitivity of − 23.1 dBm (BER = 10 −9) is reached.