A Low-Noise High-Gain Broadband Transformer-Based Inverter-Based Transimpedance Amplifier

In this paper, a transformer-based bandwidth (BW) extension technique is employed to improve the BW, noise, and silicon area of inverter-based transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) even when they use inductive peaking. A TIA based on the proposed technique, designed and laid out in a 16-nm FinFET process, demonstrates a 36% increased in BW, a 19% reduction in input-referred noise, and a 57% reduction in silicon area compared to the conventional TIA with inductive peaking. In the proposed TIA architecture, inclusion of a transformer in the forward path compensates partially for the parasitic capacitances of the inverter and relaxes the transimpedance limit of the conventional TIA. The proposed technique also lowers the input-referred current noise spectrum of the TIA. Post-layout in companion with electromagnetic (EM) simulations and statistical analysis are employed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed architecture. Simulation results show that the TIA achieves a transimpedance gain of 58 dB Omega, a BW of 17.4 GHz, an input-referred noise of 17.4 pA/sqrt (Hz), and an eye-opening of 20 mV at a data-rate of 64 Gbps PAM4 and at a bit-error-rate (BER) of 1E-6. The whole TIA chain is expected to consume 19 mW and occupies an active area of 0.023 mm(2).