Ultrasensitive Reset-Less Integrator-Based PIN-Diode Receiver With Input Current Control

This work presents a novel ultrasensitive integrator-based optical frontend that eliminates the need for a reset network to stabilize the operating point. The proposed method introduces a current source at the input node that compensates the average photocurrent. Eliminating the reset phase for the integrator results in better data rate scalability and PVT robustness without the need for correlated double sampling. The full-custom designed PIN-diode receiver was fabricated in 0.35<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>m CMOS and characterized. Using a Manchester encoded PRBS15 bit stream, the best sample achieved a sensitivity of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathbf {-52.93}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>dBm at a wavelength of 642nm, an effective data rate of 50Mb/s and a bit error ratio of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathbf {2\cdot 10^{-3}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. This results in a distance of 20.75 dB to the quantum limit.