Title :
A 24 GHz broadband SiGe HBT limiting amplifier
Author :
Krithivasan, Ramkumar ; Comeau, Jonathan Phillip ; Kuo, Wei-Min Lance ; Lu, Yuan ; Cressler, John D. ; Joseph, Alvin J.
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA
Abstract :
A broadband, high-gain, limiting amplifier implemented in 120 GHz silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology and aimed at low-cost 10-20 Gb/sec applications is presented. The amplifier achieves a saturated differential midband gain of more than 42 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth in excess 24 GHz for a 10-mVpp (-40 dBm) input. A clear and wide-open eye diagram was measured under 10-Gb/s operation. The limiting amplifier has an input sensitivity of less than 12 mVpp at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-9. All of the stages of the amplifier employ the modified differential Cherry-Hooper architecture to achieve a broadband gain response. The total power consumption of the chip is 550 mW off of a -5 V power supply. The total chip area is 0.945 × 0.720 mm2. This amplifier is compared with other published amplifiers based on a newly proposed figure-of-merit.
Keywords :
Ge-Si alloys; bipolar analogue integrated circuits; differential amplifiers; heterojunction bipolar transistors; limiters; millimetre wave amplifiers; -5 V; 10 to 20 Gbit/s; 120 GHz; 24 GHz; 550 mW; SiGe; broadband HBT limiting amplifier; broadband gain response; differential Cherry-Hooper architecture; heterojunction bipolar transistor technology; Bandwidth; Bit error rate; Broadband amplifiers; Differential amplifiers; Energy consumption; Germanium silicon alloys; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Power supplies; Signal analysis; Silicon germanium;
Conference_Titel :
Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting, 2005. Proceedings of the
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-9309-0
DOI :
10.1109/BIPOL.2005.1555233