A 0.18-µm CMOS 1.25-Gbps front-end receiver for low-cost short reach optical communications

This paper presents an optical receiver for short reach applications, suitable for a low-cost transmission channel; plastic optical fiber. In order to compensate the limited bandwidth due to the inherent performance of the fiber and the external photodiode, an adaptive equalizer is included in the receiver chain. In addition, pre and postamplifier with gain control provide a wide input dynamic range. The prototype implemented in a standard 0.18μm CMOS process, targets 1.25Gbps with an error-free sensitivity below -16dBm. The total power consumption is below 110mW at a single supply of 1.8V.