Abstract
The dc-coupled (DCC) broadband operation is a fundamental requirement in many applications, especially in optical communication systems. However, circuits allowing differential to single-ended conversion in a DCC fashion are very rare to be found in the literature. In this letter, a novel differential to single-ended ultrabroadband DCC balun in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology featuring <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{t}/f_{\max }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of 300/500 GHz is presented. A circuit analysis and a performance comparison between the proposed balun and two other configurations which are commonly used to convert a differential signal to a single-ended one is carried out. The design of the mentioned balun is described focusing on the trade-offs between gain, bandwidth (BW) and linearity. Measurement results show how the presented topology can achieve a low-frequency power gain of −7 dB and a 1 dB BW of 80 GHz, along with a total harmonic distortion (THD) of 7%.
Published Version
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