Recently published CMOS optical receivers consist of a limited-bandwidth first-stage transimpedance amplifier (TIA) followed by an equalizer. Limiting the TIA’s bandwidth improves the gain and reduces the noise but introduces a significant inter-symbol interference (ISI) that is dealt with by the subsequent equalizer. Continuous-time linear equalizer (CTLE) is a commonly used equalizer in both electrical and optical links. However, recent research reported different findings about CTLE-based optical receivers. Some research papers concluded that CTLEs boost high-frequency noise compared to a full-bandwidth design. Other publications reported that high-frequency noise remains unaffected while white noise is significantly reduced. This work aims to solve this discrepancy by presenting an accurate analysis for CTLE-based optical receivers considering noise, gain, and jitter. We show that the noise performance depends on the pole/zero locations of the limited-bandwidth (LBW)-TIA and the follow-on equalizer. A properly designed CTLE-based receiver achieves a
Research Member
Research Department
Research Year
2022
Research Journal
IEEE Access
Research Publisher
IEEE
Research Vol
10
Research Website
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9978293
Research Abstract