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Project

RINOS: Robust Integration of Nanoscale Optical Receiver Systems.

Optical receivers with photodiodes integrated in a standard CMOS technology have as main advantage a reduction of as well cost as package size. They can be applied in short-distance communication systems where low cost is crucial. Examples are LAN networks, "fiber-to-the-home", in-car communication systems and optical interconnects from board to board or from chip to chip. Additionally, high volumes of low-cost receivers are needed in optical storage media such as CD, CD-ROM, DVD and more recently the Blu-ray Disc. Moreover, there is an increasing demand for the application of these technologies in nuclear environments where reliability and radiation hardness of such systems are crucial criteria. Other reliability related issues that will be examined are the operation of a circuit under high temperature conditions and the immunity of a circuit against EMI. Both are vary important issues in industrial and commercial applications. During this project, the building blocks of such optical receivers will be studied. As the photodiode is the most crucial building block, a large amount of the work will be done on this block. Aside from this, work will be done on the transimpedance amplifer, the limiting amplifier and new architectures for burst-mode clock- and data-recovery systems. Their behaviour under radiation will also be investigated.
Date:1 Oct 2008 →  30 Sep 2012
Keywords:Noise, EMI, Reliability, Analog, CMOS, Photodiode, Radiation, High temperature
Disciplines:Physical geography and environmental geoscience, Communications technology, Geomatic engineering, Communications, Nanotechnology, Design theories and methods, Electronics