Wideband pulse amplifiers for the NECTAr chip

Abstract The NECTAr collaboration's FE option for the camera of the CTA is a 16 bits and 1–3 GS/s sampling chip based on analog memories including most of the readout functions. This works describes the input amplifiers of the NECTAr ASIC. A fully differential wideband amplifier, with voltage gain up to 20 V/V and a BW of 400 MHz. As it is impossible to design a fully differential OpAmp with an 8 GHz GBW product in a 0.35 CMOS technology, an alternative implementation based on HF linearized transconductors is explored. The output buffer is a class AB miller operational amplifier, with special non-linear current boost.