A fully integrated CMOS receiver front-end for optic Gigabit Ethernet

A fully integrated fiber-optic receiver chip in a CMOS technology is presented. The design was done in a low-cost mixed-signal analog pure CMOS technology with 0.35-μm gate length. It incorporates every building block needed for standard fiber-optic receiver application, e.g., transimpedance amplifier, postamplifier, signal detect, and several control circuits. The chip works without any external components, such as capacitors usually needed to ensure the broadband operation down to several tens of kilohertz. Three designs were processed for typical data applications between 155 Mb/s and 1.25 Gb/s. The difference in the designs can be created by changing only one metal mask and programming some bandwidth and noise-relevant components on the chip. The results in sensitivity, dynamic range, and other behaviors are fully compliant with the relevant standards, such as SONET or IEEE 802.3 (Gigabit Ethernet) and future IEEE 1394 plastic optical fiber (POF) communication