Design and Fabrication of Ultra-High-Speed Low-Noise MMIC Preamplifier for a 10Gbps Optical Receiver

This paper describes design, fabrication, and performance of an ultra-high-speed and low-noise MMIC (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit) preamplifier for a 10 Gb/s optical receiver. The transimpedance type 3-stage MMIC preamplifier for ultra-high-speed and low-noise was designed using an AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs P-HEMTs(Pseudomorphic High Electron Mobility Transistors) with 0.15 length T-shaped gate. To obtain broadband characteristics, we used the inductor peaking technique, and the gate width was optimized for low noise performance. Measurements reveal that the fabricated preamplifier has the high transimpedance gain of 60 ㏈Ω and 9.15 ㎓ bandwidth with the noise figure of less than 3.9 ㏈.