0.5 μm GaAs MESFET 4.2 mW ultra-low power decision circuit for optical communications with 0.1 μm CMOS and HBT implementation

The design specifications considering low-power and high-speed are presented. Several decision circuits for an optical communication receiver system, are designed and simulated using AIM-SPICE circuit simulation tools, based on extracted process parameter using an in-house characterization and modeling tool named CMLEE. Several circuits using 2×4 emitter-area HBT, 0.5 μm MESFET and compatible 0.1 μm CMOS technology are designed and simulated for the output node waveform and power consumption. All the waveform simulations showed good performance at 10 Gbps. It is observed that the 0.1 μm CMOS circuits of current mainstream electronic systems shows more than a 10 GHz operation, opening an opportunity for high frequency as long as deep sub-μm technology compromises maturity and cost in reality. In terms of power consumption, the sub-half 0.5 μm GaAs MESFET at 4.2 mW is the best choice for the same 10 GHz speed performance, compared to 60 mW by the 0.1 μm CMOS circuit