Monolithic amplifier with AGC and differential output for 622 Mbit/s optical communications

The authors deal with the implementation of a monolithic optical amplifier for SDH/SONET applications operating at speeds up to 622 Mbit/s. The amplifier incorporates automatic gain control (AGC) and differential output, so it is capable of being connected directly to a quantiser and a clock recovery chip-set. The presented design is fabricated on a cheap 1.2 /spl mu/m BiCMOS technology which is actually an enhanced CMOS technology offering only NPN bipolar transistors.