A single power supply common-gate （CG） current mode transimpedance preamplifier （TIA） is developed with a 0.5μm GaAs PHEMT process. The amplifier has a measured - 3dB bandwidth of 7. 5GHz and a transimpedance gain of 45dBΩ. Both the input and output voltage standing wave ratios （VSWR） are less than 2 within the bandwidth. The equivalent input noise current spectral density varies from 14.3 to 22pA/√Hz, with an average value of 17. 2pA/√Hz. Having a timing jitter of 14ps and eye amplitude of about 138mV,the measured output eye diagram for 10Gb/s NRZ pseudorandom binary sequence （PRBS） is clear and satisfactory.
A high gain cascade connected preamplifier for optical receivers is developed with 0.5μm GaAs PHEMT technology from the Nanjing Electronic Devices Institute. To begin with, the transimpedance amplifier has a -3dB bandwidth of 10GHz, with a small signal gain of around 9dB. The post-stage distributed amplifier （DA） has a -3dB bandwidth of close to 20GHz,with a small signal gain of around 12dB. As a whole,the cascade preamplifier has a measured small signal gain of 21.3dB and a transimpedance of 55.3dBΩ in a 50Ω system. With a higher signal-to-noise ratio than that of the TIA and a markedly improved waveform distortion compared with that of the DA, the measured output eye diagram for 10Gb/s NRZ pseudorandom binary sequence is clear and symmetric.
