Stmicroelectronics S.r.l.

Gabriele Minoia

Enrico Stefano Temporiti Milani

Wissam Yussef Sabri Eyssa

Salvatore Galeone

A relatively high-speed, high-efficiency CMOS two branch driver core that may operate under relatively low supply voltage may include thin oxide CMOS transistors configured to generate rail-to-rail output swings larger than twice a supply voltage and without exceeding safe operating area limits. Each of the two branches may include two stacked CMOS inverter pairs configured to drive a respective load capacitance coupled between respective CMOS inverter outputs, in phase opposition to the other branch. A pre-driver circuit input with a differential modulating signal may output two synchronous differential voltage drive signals of a swing of half of the supply voltage and DC-shifted by half of the supply voltage with respect to each other and that may be applied to the respective CMOS inverter inputs of the two branches.

Electro-optical modulator interface

The differential trans-impedance amplifier uses trans-resistance(s) connected between the input nodes of a first differential amplifier, to implement a trans-impedance differential amplifier in a differential fashion and has two identical resistances, each connected between the photodiode and a respective DC voltage rail of a common bias network of the photodiode adapted to reverse bias the photodiode. The biasing resistances may be much larger than the trans-resistance(s) to prevent drawing any significant signal current from the photodiode. The amplifier may retain the advantages of a classical differential topology while effectively overcoming drawbacks that arise in high data rate applications.

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Pavia, Italy

Gabriele Minoia