Performance Comparison of Broadband Traveling Wave Amplifiers in 130-nm SiGe:C SG13G2 and SG13G3 BiCMOS Technologies

In this letter, a comparison between two ultra-wideband traveling wave amplifiers (TWAs) designed in two different SiGe:C technologies consuming only 500 mW is presented. The first design utilizes the IHP's 130-nm SiGe:C BiCMOS SG13G2 technology, featuring f
_T
/f
_MAX
=300/500 GHz, while the second design uses the IHP's 130-nm SiGe:C BiCMOS SG13G3 technology, featuring f
_T
/f
_MAX
=470/700 GHz. For a fair comparison, the same architecture has been used for the design of both amplifiers. On-wafer measurements of the SG13G2 amplifier show 15.3 dB gain and 87.4 GHz bandwidth, while the design in SG13G3 technology reaches 16.9 dB gain and more than 110 GHz bandwidth. There is a 1% difference in the output power efficiency where it is 4.1% and 5.1% on SG13G2 and SG13G3 technologies, respectively. In both cases, time-domain measurements show a reliable 120 Gbps non-return-to-zero (NRZ) operation. The presented SG13G3-based TWA shows state-of-the-art performance among similar SiGe BiCMOS amplifiers.