Design and analysis of 20 Gb/s inductorless limiting amplifier in 65 nm CMOS technology

A high speed inductorless limiting amplifier (LA) in an optical communication receiver with the working speed up to 20 Gb/s is presented. The LA includes an input matching network, a four-stage 3rd order amplifier core, an output buffer for the test and a DC offset cancellation (DCOC). It uses the active interleaving feedback technique both to broaden the bandwidth and achieve the flatness response. Based on our careful analysis of the DCOC and stability, an error amplifier is added to the DCOC loop in order to keep the offset voltage reasonable. Fabricated in the 65 nm CMOS technology, the LA only occupies an area of 0.45 × 0.25 mm² (without PAD). The measurement results show that the LA achieves a differential voltage gain of 37 dB, and a 3-dB bandwidth of 16.5 GHz. Up to 26.5 GHz, the S_dd11 and S_dd22 are less than −16 dB and −9 dB. The chip excluding buffer is supplied by 1.2 V VDD and draws a current of 50 mA.