| The ever increasing demand for ubiquitous wireless connectivity coupled with the exponential growth in internet data traffic and mobile device capacity has spurred wireless network research. Optical signals as a medium for short-range broadband wireless communication has gained considerable attention offering unlimited, unregulated bandwidth channels, low transceiver complexity, power efficiency and network security. This thesis presents research on the design and optimization of integrated optical receiver circuits in CMOS for wireless communication considering the competing trade-offs of gain, power, dynamic range, and noise performance at multi-GHz channel bandwidths. An analog front-end receiver with desensitization to input capacitance for optical wireless communication is presented. The TIA achieves a maximum gain of 52dBO, -3dB bandwidth of 523MHz at 5pF input capacitance, and variable TIA gain from 52dBO to 36dBO without instability. An imaging diversity front-end receiver employing select-best method for free-space optical communication was presented in this thesis. Each single-channel front-end transimpedance amplifier exhibits a transimpedance gain of 60.2dBO, a -3dB bandwidth of 4.4GHz. A 10Gb/s imaging diversity front-end receiver implemented in a 90nm CMOS process and employing maximum-ratio-combining method is also presented. Each single-channel front-end transimpedance amplifier exhibits a transimpedance gain of 55dBO and a -3dB bandwidth of 11.2GHz and designed for hybrid flip-chip integration with a custom InGaAs detector array. |
