A Wideband TIA-Driver Unit in 22-nm CMOS FDSOI for Integrated Microwave Optoelectronic Oscillators

This paper presents the design and measurement results of a cascaded transimpedance amplifier (TIA)-driver unit in 22-nm CMOS FDSOI technology as part of a potential integrated microwave optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). The TIA utilizes three-cascaded stages of inverter-based units to increase its gain via composite transistors and reduce its power supply via current reusing while the driver is based on a 3-stacked amplifier stage with resistive feedback to increase the output swing and maintaining the amplifier stability. Measurement results show the TIA-driver unit achieves a voltage gain of 35–39 dB, noise figure of 6.5 dB and a group delay of 50–100 ps over the 2–13 GHz bandwidth. It has an output voltage swing of ~ 1.5 V for an input TIA current of 300 µA, suitable to drive a silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) as part of an integrated microwave OEO. The chip occupies an area of 0.918 mm² and consumes 225 mW using a 0.8 V and 2.5 V supply voltage for TIA and driver, respectively.