A 2.5-ghz optical receiver front-end in a 0.13 0.13-μm cmos process for biosensor application

Abstract

This paper presents a low-noise and low-power transimpedance amplifier (TIA,) intended for use as an analog frontend for a very low biomedical signal detection. Different topologies are reviewed, and then the most appropriate structures are characterized. A common gate transimpedance amplifier has been designed in 0.13 µm CMOS process. Experimental results obtained show that the TIA connected to a Geiger mode photodiode with a total capacitance of 2 pF performed a bandwidth of 2.47 GHz with transimpedance gain of 53.8 and input referred current noise of 28.1 pA/(Hz)1/2 by using regulated cascade topology. The core circuit of the poposed analog front-end receiver occupies a chip area of 900 µm2 with power dissipation of 1.8 mW. These encouraging results have exhibited the potential of the circuit for use in the CMOS photon detector for biomedical sensing application.