RF-ESDISSCC 2004 / SESSION 26 / OPTICAL AND FAST I/O / 26.6 26.6 40Gb/s Amplifier and ESD Protection Circuit in 0.18m CMOS Technology Sherif Galal, Behzad Razavi University of California, Los Angeles, CA Optical systems operating at 40 Gb/s require broadband amplifiers and ESD protection circuits in both the receive and transmit paths. This paper describes an amplifier design that can precede or follow an equalizer in the receiver or act as a predriver in the transmitter front end. An ESD circuit is also presented that can be used for input or output nodes of 40Gb/s circuits. While distributed circuits have been considered as an attractive candidate for high-speed amplification, several issues make their realization in CMOS technology difficult. First, since the bias currents of all stages fl……