A 2.71-pA/√Hz ultra-low noise, 70-dB dynamic range CMOS transimpedance amplifier with incorporated microstrip line techniques over extended bandwidth

Abstract

Recent advancements in the area of telemedicine have focused on remote patient monitoring services as a new frontier in medical applications. The present work reports a 65-nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS)-based transimpedance amplifier (TIA) in an optical radar system for non-contact patient monitoring. A T-shaped microstrip line (MSL) integrated with variable gain common source TIA using MSL peaking technique and off-chip post-amplification integration is a newly proposed architecture to achieve a ultra-low noise, high dynamic range (DR) and high figure of merit over broadband than a traditional TIAs. First, the integrated T-shaped MSL develops an additional resonant frequency that resonates with a photodiode capacitance improving the bandwidth performance at higher Q values. Second, the shunt MSL peaking technique that introduces an additional conjugate pole-pair that cancels the effect of input capacitance helps to further improve the bandwidth of the TIA. Finally, an active feedback concept achieves a wide linear dynamic range enabling high TIA detectability. The proposed TIA realizes an impedance bandwidth of 770 MHz ranging from 7.12 to 7.89 GHz with a transimpedance gain of 105.1 dBΩ and ultra-low input-referred noise (IRN) density of 2.71 pA/√Hz. A high linear DR of 70 dB is achieved by employing a variable gain control scheme with a low group delay variation of 0.81 ns. The proposed work demonstrates a 1-Gb/s data rate while a bit-error rate less than 10−12 is achieved. The TIA consumes a power of 0.82 mW under the supply voltage of 1.2 V. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.