Novel cell-AGC technique for burst-mode CMOS preamplifier with wide dynamic range and high sensitivity for ATM-PON system

We propose a novel cell-AGC technique for an ATM-cell-based burst optical receiver on a 156-Mb/s subscriber system. The cell-AGC controls transimpedance gain according to the burst-cell power and enables reception of burst signals with low extinction ratio. In addition, to realize high sensitivity, we developed an amplifier that is stable under changes in ambient conditions and deviations of transistor characteristics on IC. By adopting these techniques in a CMOS preamplifier IC, the detectable power difference between burst cells was enlarged to more than 30 dB, and the minimum sensitivity was improved to less than -39.3 dBm. These performances show that our new IC fully satisfies the high-sensitivity specification of an ATM-PON system, and incorporating this IC in the system makes it more flexible and economical.