A reconfigurable fully-integrated 0. 18-mu m CMOS feed-forward equalizer IC for 10-Gb/sec backplane links

Abstract

In order to realize adjustable equalization over various backplane channel configurations, a reconfigurable fully-integrated equalizer IC is presented. Backplane channels over different trace lengths and dielectric materials were measured and characterized. Feed-Forward Equalizer (FFE) topology with Finite Impulse Response (FIR) architecture was chosen for optimal equalization for the corresponding backplane configurations. For a reconfigurable FFE IC implementation, wide-range tunable active delay line, variable tap-gain multiplier and 8-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) were fabricated in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS technology. The proposed reconfigurable FFE demonstrated successful equalization at 10Gb/sec over various channel configurations.