A new current-mode receiver for high-speed electrical/optical link

In this work we propose high-speed, low-noise current-mode receiver, called current-conveyor transimpedance amplifier (CCTIA) for low-current differential signaling (LCDS). Proposed receiver is suitable for both optical and electrical chip-to-chip interconnect applications. This low-noise and high speed receiver enables LCDS signaling. The other unique feature of the proposed current-mode receiver is, it provides very low tunable differential input impedance of few ohms. This very low-input impedance is suitable for optical chip-to-chip interconnection applications. Also the input impedance of the receiver can be made equal to 100-ΩΩ differential over wide frequency range for matching the characteristic impedance of electrical chip-to-chip interconnect. The input-referred noise current of CCTIA is smaller than that of a Common-Gate TIA (CG-TIA). The proposed receiver is implemented in 1.8-V, 0.18-μmμm digital CMOS technology. The input-referred noise current and 3-dB bandwidth of the receiver are 1.23-μAμA and 8.3-GHz, respectively. For the targeted bit-error rate (BER) of 10−12, data transfer rate of 6-Gb/s is achieved, while transmitting the data over FR4 PCB trace of length 20-cm. As an optical receiver, the CCTIA supports 10-Gb/s data transmission. The power dissipated in the CCTIA is 4.2-mW.