A DC to 40 GHZ 4-VPP Output High-Efficiency Linear Driver for Optical Communication

This paper presents a low-power high-efficiency linear driver for optical modulators in a $\mathbf{0.25-\mu \mathbf{m}}$ SiGe: C BiCMOS technology. The driver features a small-signal gain of 18 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth of 40 GHz and delivers a maximum output amplitude of 4 Vpp to a $\mathbf{100 \Omega}$ differential load. With the inductor-peaking method, this driver achieves $\mathbf{34 \ ps \pm 3 \ ps}$ group delay from DC to 50 GHz. For time-domain measurement, this driver achieves a symbol rate of 56 Gb/s NRZ and 28.05 Gbaud PAM4 limited by measurement platform limitations while it has potential to achieve 50 Gbaud PAM4 from design analysis and S-parameter measurement. The bandwidth/fr ratio is 22.2%, the power efficiency is 4 % , and the power consumption is 499 mW which is 40% lower than the state-of-the-art.