Investigation of High-Speed Optoelectronic Receivers in Silicon-Germanium (SiGe)

Silicon Germanium (Si1-xGex) is considered the choice for analog/mixed-signal RF and optoelectronic systems due to its high speed, low noise and compatibility with standard CMOS processes. The goal of this thesis is to investigate photo-detection in SiGe and optical receiver circuits in the commercially available IBM 5HP SiGe BiCMOS process. The study of photodetectors based on SiGe is of interest because of its high absorption capability at wavelengths between 1.1-1.5um. In this thesis several designs of receiver circuits and front-end transimpedance amplifiers (TIA) were designed and fabricated in the IBM 5HP (0.5µm) SiGe technology exhibiting high transit (fT) and maximum oscillation frequency (fMAX). Spectre simulations for both the transimpedance amplifiers and the complete receiver circuits are conducted at the single supply voltage of 3.3V in the Cadence Analog Affirma design environment. The analog mixed signal design tools NeoCircuit/NeoCell from Neolinear Inc. and Analog Affirma from Cadence Inc. are used for the optimization of the complete receiver circuits consisting of a transimpedance amplifier, a cascaded multi-stage differential amplifier and a decision circuit