A 51GHz master-slave latch and static frequency divider in 0.18μm SiGe BiCMOS

A master-slave latch and companion 1:2, 1:4 and 1:8 static frequency dividers fabricated in 120GHz fT SiGe operate at 51GHz, while drawing 30 mA per latch (780mA total, with input-output buffers) from a -5.2V power supply. At 40Gb/s (40GHz clock) latch operates error-free (BER better than 10-14, 231-1 PRBS) with 152° data-clock phase margin. The directly observed width of the metastability zone of the latch is 1.2ps.