Noise in distributed MESFET preamplifiers

Author

Freundorfer, Al P. ; Nguyen, The Linh

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Queen´´s Univ., Kingston, Ont., Canada

Volume

31

Issue

8

fYear

1996

fDate

8/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1100

Lastpage

1111

Abstract

The theory of noise in a distributed MESFET preamplifier is developed. From this, it is shown that the equivalent input noise current density of a distributed preamplifier of an optical receiver can be improved by using large gate line matching impedance and appropriate scaling of the MESFET width. A front-end tuning circuit was designed using filter theory to further improve the noise performance of the preamplifier. A monolithic GaAs MESFET distributed preamplifier was fabricated with on chip front-end tuning components. Using a 35 μm InGaAs p-i-n photodiode, the preamplifier was shown to have an equivalent input noise current density of 8 pA/√Hz and an 8 GHz bandwidth. To date, this is the best known result for a 0.8 μm GaAs MESFET process

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; MESFET integrated circuits; circuit tuning; gallium arsenide; integrated circuit noise; integrated optoelectronics; optical receivers; p-i-n photodiodes; preamplifiers; 0.8 micron; 35 micron; 8 GHz; GaAs; distributed MESFET preamplifiers; equivalent input noise current density; filter theory; front-end tuning circuit; gate line matching impedance; on chip front-end tuning; optical receiver; p-i-n photodiode; scaling; Circuit noise; Circuit optimization; Current density; Gallium arsenide; Impedance; MESFETs; Optical noise; Optical receivers; Optical tuning; Preamplifiers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4.508257

Filename

508257