A 79 dBΩ 1.2 GHz Low-Noise Single-Ended CMOS Transimpedance Amplifier for High-Performance OTDR Applications

2019
Agata Romanova, Vaidotas Barzdenas

The work reports on the design and performance of a low-noise low-cost CMOS transimpedance amplifier (TIA). The proposed circuit shall be employed in optical time-domain reflectometers and is implemented using an affordable 0.18 µm 1.8 V CMOS process. The approach preserves the benefits of a classical feedback structure while addressing the noise problem of conventional feed-forward and resistive feedback architectures via the usage of noise-efficient capacitive feedback. Circuit-level modifications are proposed to mitigate the voltage headroom and DC current issues. The suggested design achieves a total gain of 82 dBΩ (79 dBΩ after the output buffer) within the bandwidth of 1.2 GHz while operating with a total input capacitance of 0.7 pF. The simulated average input-referred noise current density is below 1.8 pA/sqrt(Hz) with the power consumption of the complete amplifier including the output buffer being 21 mW.

Keywords
Analog integrated circuits; broadband amplifiers; CMOS integrated circuits; optical time-domain reflectometry; transimpedance amplifier.
DOI
10.2478/ecce-2019-0015
Hyperlink
https://doi.org/10.2478/ecce-2019-0015

Romanova, A., Barzdenas, V. A 79 dBΩ 1.2 GHz Low-Noise Single-Ended CMOS Transimpedance Amplifier for High-Performance OTDR Applications. Electrical, Control and Communication Engineering, 2019, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 113-118. ISSN 2255-9140. e-ISSN 2255-9159. Available from: doi:10.2478/ecce-2019-0015

Publication language
English (en)