10GBase-LX CMOS Automatic Gain Control Amplifier Design

A 5Gbps automatic gain control amplifier is presented with 27.8dB input dynamic range for 10GBase-LX4 Ethernet in 0.18mum CMOS technology. Five push-pull inverters use self-bias resistors and inductive-series peaking technique to realize a variable gain amplifier (VGA). This VGA achieves 4GHz bandwidth and 20dB linear-in-dB gain tuning range. The proposed 5Gbps AGC amplifier yields constant output amplitude 100mV for an input 27.8dB dynamic range