Lumped Ultra-Broadband Linear Driver in 130 nm SiGe SG13G3 Technology

In this paper, a fully differential lumped linear driver for optical modulators using the novel high performance 130 nm IHP SG13G3 BiCMOS technology, featuring f t /f max of 470 / 650 GHz, is presented. The amplifier is composed of two stages, an input variable gain stage and an output cascode stage. Peaking inductors in both stages have been used to flatten the frequency response and increase the bandwidth, while degeneration resistors have been employed for improving the circuit linearity. Measurement results show that the proposed design has a low frequency gain of 18 dB and a 3 dB bandwidth of more than 115 GHz, along with a total harmonic distortion at 1 dB compression of 6 %, an in band group delay variation of ± 0.7 ps and an overall power dissipation of 280 mW. Time domain measurements, limited in speed by the measurement setup, show operation up to 128 Gbps non-return-to-zero and 64 GBaud 4-levels pulse amplitude modulation, together with an output voltage swing at 1 dB compression of 2 V ppd , representing a significant breakthrough in terms of data rate and going beyond the performance of state-of-the-art lumped drivers to be found in literature, thanks to the high performance provided by the SG13G3 IHP technology.