A 10 Gb/s optical receiver in 0.25 μm silicon-on-sapphire CMOS

An optical receiver designed and fabricated in 0.25μm ultra-thin silicon (UTSi) on sapphire technology is flip-chip integrated with p-i-n photodiodes. The receiver includes a transimpedance amplifier (TIA), limiting amplifiers (LA), and an output buffer. The power consumption of the TIA and limiting amplifiers is 67.3 mW. The receiver is shown operating with a gain of 57 dBΩ at a bit rate of 10 Gb/s. The measured sensitivity is −1.7 dBm for a bit error rate of 10
⁻⁹
. This is the first 0.25μm CMOS TIA and LA codesign that operates optically at 10 Gb/s.