A 5.2-mW, 2.5-Gb/s limiting amplifer for OC-48 SONET applications

Abstract

In this paper, a fully differential CMOS limiting amplifier is presented for OC-48 SONET applications. With negative resistance and capacitance characteristics, it achieves significant gain and bandwidth enhancement. The amplifier was implemented in a 0.18-μm CMOS process, occupying the chip area of 0.025mm2. Post-layout simulation results demonstrate the bandwidth of 2.4-GHz, the differential gain of 41-dB, the input sensitivity of 1.5mV pp, and the power consumption of only 5.2mW from a single 1.2-V power supply. ©2006 IEEE.