  An all transistor active inductor shunt peaking structure has been used in a
prototype of 8-Gbps high-speed VCSEL driver which is designed for the optical
link in ATLAS liquid Argon calorimeter upgrade. The VCSEL driver is fabricated
in a commercial 0.25-um Silicon-on-Sapphire (SoS) CMOS process for radiation
tolerant purpose. The all transistor active inductor shunt peaking is used to
overcome the bandwidth limitation from the CMOS process. The peaking structure
has the same peaking effect as the passive one, but takes a small area, does
not need linear resistors and can overcome the process variation by adjust the
peaking strength via an external control. The design has been tapped out, and
the prototype has been proofed by the preliminary electrical test results and
bit error ratio test results. The driver achieves 8-Gbps data rate as simulated
with the peaking. We present the all transistor active inductor shunt peaking
structure, simulation and test results in this paper.
