An 88-Gbps, 3.3-pJ/Bit I/Q Receiver With Current-Mode Phase-Frequency Detection in a 130-nm SiGe HBT Technology

• Published in: IEEE solid-state circuits letters Vol. 5; pp. 308 - 311
• Main Authors: Movaghar, Ghazal, Valenzuela, Luis A., Liu, Junqian, Maharry, Aaron, Schow, Clint L., Buckwalter, James F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Amplifiers; Bit error rate; Broadband; Circuit boards; Circuits; Coherent receiver; Energy efficiency; Gain; Integrated circuits; optical receiver; Optical receivers; Phase frequency detectors; Phase shift keying; Power consumption; Printed circuits; quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK); short reach; Silicon germanides; silicon germanium; Solid state circuits
• ISSN: 2573-9603; 2573-9603
• DOI: 10.1109/LSSC.2022.3231238

This letter presents a broadband receiver integrated circuit (RXIC) for energy-efficient optical coherent communication. The proposed circuit approach reuses current generated in a common-base transimpedance amplifier (TIA) to distribute current into a limiting amplifier (LA) and Costas phase/frequency detector (PFD) fabricated in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The RXIC is electrically characterized on an FR-4 PCB assembly demonstrating open-eye NRZ data rates up to 44 Gb/s per channel with bit error rates (BERs) less than <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">2.2\times 10^{-3} </tex-math></inline-formula>. The total power consumption of the dual-channel receiver and PFD is 290 mW for an energy efficiency of 3.3 pJ/bit.