Radiation-hard ASICs for optical data transmission in the first phase of the LHC upgrade

We have designed two ASICs for possible applications in the optical links of a new layer of the pixel detector to be install inside the ATLAS Pixel detector for the first phase of the LHC luminosity upgrade. The ASICs include a high-speed driver for the VCSEL and a receiver/decoder to decode the signal received at the PIN diode to extract the data and clock. Both ASICs contain 4 channels for operation with a VCSEL or PIN array. The ASICs were designed using a 130 nm CMOS process to enhance the radiation-hardness. We have characterized the fabricated ASICs and the performance of the ASICs is satisfactory. The receiver/decoder can properly decode the bi-phase marked input stream with low PIN current and the driver can operate a VCSEL up to ∼ 5 Gb/s. The added functionalities are also successful, including redundancy to bypass a broken VCSEL or PIN channel, individual control of VCSEL current, and power-on reset circuit to set all VCSEL currents to a nominal value. The ASICs were irradiated to a dose of 46 Mrad with 24 GeV/c protons. The observed modest degradation is acceptable and the single event upset rate is negligible.