A 10 Gb/s AlGaAs/GaAs HBT high power fully differential limiting distributed amplifier for III-V Mach-Zehnder modulator

Author

Wong, Thomas Y K ; Freundorfer, A.P. ; Beggs, Bruce C. ; Sitch, John E.

Author_Institution

Adv. Technol. Lab., Nortel Technol., Ottawa, Ont., Canada

Volume

31

Issue

10

fYear

1996

fDate

10/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1388

Lastpage

1393

Abstract

High power, high frequency linear distributed amplifiers are available commercially which provide high power single-ended drive capability from a single-ended source. The signal source can be either analog or digital. Such amplifiers must have stringent gain and phase response requirement over a wide bandwidth in order to maintain good eye quality of the signal. A limiting amplifier, with less stringent bandwidth requirement than analog amplifiers, can be used to amplify pure digital signal source. The purpose of this paper is to present a high power, fully differential limiting distributed amplifier operating at 10 Gb/s. The amplifier has been fabricated with both AlGaAs/GaAs and InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) processes. The amplifier is designed to drive any 50 Ω system. In particular, this amplifier is intended to drive a III-V Mach-Zehnder modulator

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; Mach-Zehnder interferometers; aluminium compounds; bipolar analogue integrated circuits; differential amplifiers; distributed amplifiers; gallium arsenide; optical communication equipment; optical modulation; 10 Gbit/s; 50 ohm; AlGaAs-GaAs; HBT processes; III-V semiconductors; Mach-Zehnder modulator; eye quality; fully differential limiting distributed amplifier; gain requirement; lightwave communication; phase response requirement; single-ended drive capability; Bandwidth; Broadband amplifiers; Distributed amplifiers; Drives; Frequency; Gallium arsenide; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; III-V semiconductor materials; Optical amplifiers; Phase modulation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4.540045

Filename

540045