Transimpedance amplifiers with 133 GHz bandwidth on 130 nm indium phosphide double heterojunction bipolar transistors

In this work, the authors present two transimpedance amplifier (TIA) circuits designed for fibre optical interconnect systems. They compare a common base (CB) topology with a common emitter (CE) shunt–shunt feedback topology in terms of frequency response, power consumption, noise, and input impedance. The two TIAs are designed on a 130 nm indium phosphide double heterojunction bipolar transistor technology from Teledyne Scientific Company (TSC) with an ft/fmax of 520 GHz/1.15 THz and are measured in the frequency and time domains. They exhibit a transimpedance gain of 42 dBΩ with a 133 GHz bandwidth, the highest bandwidth reported in the literature and power consumption of 32.3 mW for the CB and 25.5 mW for the CE. Eye diagram measurements were conducted up to 64 Gbps and input referred noise density was measured at $30.2\, {\rm pA}/\sqrt {{\rm Hz}} $30.2pA/Hz for the CB and $13.9\, {\rm pA}/\sqrt {{\rm Hz}} $13.9pA/Hz for the CE.