ABSTRACT
Techniques for extending the bandwidth of amplifiers were proposed as early as the 1930s for audio and television applications encompassing passive filtering techniques such as inductive peaking, and later, distributed amplification. The emergence of deep-submicron complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology has created the need for wide bandwidth amplifiers that can be used in mixed-signal/radiofrequency (RF) wireless and wireline applications for high-speed data communication with low error rates, low cost, and low power. This chapter describes techniques that build on conventional inductive peaking techniques to achieve greater enhancements in bandwidth. The analysis of the parasitic effects is straightforward for the shunt-peaked amplifier; the adverse effects of the parasitics are also evident for other peaking techniques, but the increased complexity in the transfer functions obscures intuition. Thus, for more complex peaking techniques such as asymmetric T-coil, bridged-shunt-series, etc., parasitic-aware optimization is essential to optimize the design.
