Highly integrated InP HBT optical receivers

Abstract

This paper presents two highly integrated receiver circuits fabricated in InP heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology operating at up to 2.5 and 7.5 Gb/s, respectively. The first IC is a generic digital receiver circuit with CMOS-compatible outputs. It integrates monolithically an automatic-gain-control amplifier, a digital clock and data recovery circuit, and a 1:8 demultiplexer, and consumes an extremely low 340 mW of power at 3.3 V, including output buffers. It can realize a full optical receiver when connected to a photo detector/preamplifier front end. The second circuit is a complete multirate optical receiver application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that integrates a photodiode, a transimpedance amplifier, a limiting amplifier, a digital clock and data recovery circuit, a 1:10 demultiplexer, and the asynchronous-transfer-mode-compatible word synchronization logic. It is the most functionally complex InP HBT optoelectronic integrated circuit reported to date. A custom package has also been developed for this ASIC.