An Optoelectronic Transmission-Gate-Based Transimpedance Amplifier in 180 nm CMOS

This paper presents an optoelectronic transmission-gate-based transimpedance amplifier (OTG-TIA) implemented by using a 0.18-μm CMOS technology for short-range LiDAR sensor applications. Particularly, a transmission-gate (TG) is strategically positioned between the on-chip P+/N-Well/Deep N-Well avalanche photodiode (APD) and the shunt-feedback voltage-mode inverter TIA. This configuration enables not only to decouple the considerable photodiode capacitance from influencing the receiver bandwidth, but also to reduce the DC offset currents from the on-chip APD. Moreover, the OTG-TIA features a multi-stage inverter-chain architecture with dual-feedback resistors to improve the voltage gain and achieve the output impedance matching. Additionally, a TG-based automatic gain control (AGC) is employed alongside the feedback resistor, thereby extending the input dynamic range further. Prototype devices of the proposed OTG-TIA show the measured performance of 67.6-dBΩ transimpedance gain, 2.14-GHz bandwidth, 57.5-dB input dynamic range, and 22.3-mW power consumption from a 1.8-V supply. The core circuit covers the area of 206 × 55.5 μm².