Design trade-offs for cost-effective multimode fiber channel equalizers in optical data center applications

A 10-Gb/s transmission over 1-km standard multimode fiber for data center applications is casestudied in terms of the design considerations for low-complexity and cost-effective equalizers which can increase the reach of multimode fiber links

State of the art in chip-to-chip interconnects

This thesis presents a study of short-range links for chips mounted in the same package, on printed circuit boards or interposers. Implemented in CMOS technology between 7 and 250 nm, with links that operate at a data rate between 0,4 and 112 Gb/s/pin and with energy efficiencies from 0,3 to 67,7 pJ/bit. The links operate on channels with an attenuation lower than 50 dB. A comparison is made with graphical representations between the different articles that shows the correlation between the different essential metrics of chip-to-chip interconnects, as well as its evolution over the last 20 years.Esta tesis presenta un estudio de enlaces de corto alcance para chips montados en un mismo paquete, en placas de circuito impreso o intercaladores. Implementado en tecnología CMOS entre 7 y 250 nm, con enlaces que operan a una velocidad de datos entre 0,4 y 112 Gb/s/pin y con eficiencias energéticas de 0,3 a 67,7 pJ/bit. Los enlaces operan en canales con una atenuación inferior a 50 dB. Se realiza una comparación con representaciones gráficas entre los diferentes artículos que muestra la correlación entre las distintas métricas esenciales de las interconexiones chip a chip, así como su evolución en los últimos 20 años.Aquesta tesi presenta un estudi d'enllaços de curt abast per a xips muntats en el mateix paquet, en plaques de circuits impresos o interposers. Implementat en tecnologia CMOS entre 7 i 250 nm, amb enllaços que funcionen a una velocitat de dades entre 0,4 i 112 Gb/s/pin i amb eficiències energètiques de 0,3 a 67,7 pJ/bit. Els enllaços funcionen en canals amb una atenuació inferior a 50 dB. Es fa una comparació amb representacions gràfiques entre els diferents articles que mostra la correlació entre les diferents mètriques essencials d'interconnexions xip a xip, així com la seva evolució en els darrers 20 anys

Wideband integrated circuits for optical communication systems

The exponential growth of internet traffic drives datacenters to constantly improvetheir capacity. Several research and industrial organizations are aiming towardsTbps Ethernet and beyond, which brings new challenges to the field of high-speedbroadband electronic circuit design. With datacenters rapidly becoming significantenergy consumers on the global scale, the energy efficiency of the optical interconnecttransceivers takes a primary role in the development of novel systems. Furthermore,wideband optical links are finding application inside very high throughput satellite(V/HTS) payloads used in the ever-expanding cloud of telecommunication satellites,enabled by the maturity of the existing fiber based optical links and the hightechnology readiness level of radiation hardened integrated circuit processes. Thereare several additional challenges unique in the design of a wideband optical system.The overall system noise must be optimized for the specific application, modulationscheme, PD and laser characteristics. Most state-of-the-art wideband circuits are builton high-end semiconductor SiGe and InP technologies. However, each technologydemands specific design decisions to be made in order to get low noise, high energyefficiency and adequate bandwidth. In order to overcome the frequency limitationsof the optoelectronic components, bandwidth enhancement and channel equalizationtechniques are used. In this work various blocks of optical communication systems aredesigned attempting to tackle some of the aforementioned challenges. Two TIA front-end topologies with 133 GHz bandwidth, a CB and a CE with shunt-shunt feedback,are designed and measured, utilizing a state-of-the-art 130 nm InP DHBT technology.A modular equalizer block built in 130 nm SiGe HBT technology is presented. Threeultra-wideband traveling wave amplifiers, a 4-cell, a single cell and a matrix single-stage, are designed in a 250 nm InP DHBT process to test the limits of distributedamplification. A differential VCSEL driver circuit is designed and integrated in a4x 28 Gbps transceiver system for intra-satellite optical communications based in arad-hard 130nm SiGe process

Broadband Receiver Electronic Circuits for Fiber-Optical Communication Systems

The exponential growth of internet traffic drives datacenters to constantly improve their capacity. As the copper based network infrastructure is being replaced by fiber-optical interconnects, new industrial standards for higher datarates are required. Several research and industrial organizations are aiming towards 400 Gb Ethernet and beyond, which brings new challenges to the field of high-speed broadband electronic circuit design. Replacing OOK with higher M-ary modulation formats and using higher datarates increases network capacity but at the cost of power. With datacenters rapidly becoming significant energy consumers on the global scale, the energy efficiency of the optical interconnect transceivers takes a primary role in the development of novel systems. There are several additional challenges unique in the design of a broadband shortreach fiber-optical receiver system. The sensitivity of the receiver depends on the noise performance of the PD and the electronics. The overall system noise must be optimized for the specific application, modulation scheme, PD and VCSEL characteristics. The topology of the transimpedance amplifier affects the noise and frequency response of the PD, so the system must be optimized as a whole. Most state-of-the-art receivers are built on high-end semiconductor SiGe and InP technologies. However, there are still several design decisions to be made in order to get low noise, high energy efficiency and adequate bandwidth. In order to overcome the frequency limitations of the optoelectronic components, bandwidth enhancement and channel equalization techniques are used. In this work several different blocks of a receiver system are designed and characterized. A broadband, 50 GHz bandwidth CB-based TIA and a tunable gain equalizer are designed in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process. An ultra-broadband traveling wave amplifier is presented, based on a 250 nm InP DHBT technology demonstrating a 207 GHz bandwidth. Two TIA front-end topologies with 133 GHz bandwidth, a CB and a CE with shunt-shunt feedback, based on a 130 nm InP DHBT technology are designed and compared

통계적 주파수 검출기 기반 기준 주파수를 사용하지 않는 클록 및 데이터 복원 회로의 설계 방법론

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2022. 8. 정덕균.In this thesis, a design of a high-speed, power-efficient, wide-range clock and data recovery (CDR) without a reference clock is proposed. A frequency acquisition scheme using a stochastic frequency detector (SFD) based on the Alexander phase detector (PD) is utilized for the referenceless operation. Pat-tern histogram analysis is presented to analyze the frequency acquisition behavior of the SFD and verified by simulation. Based on the information obtained by pattern histogram analysis, SFD using autocovariance is proposed. With a direct-proportional path and a digital integral path, the proposed referenceless CDR achieves frequency lock at all measurable conditions, and the measured frequency acquisition time is within 7μs. The prototype chip has been fabricated in a 40-nm CMOS process and occupies an active area of 0.032 mm2. The proposed referenceless CDR achieves the BER of less than 10-12 at 32 Gb/s and exhibits an energy efficiency of 1.15 pJ/b at 32 Gb/s with a 1.0 V supply.본 논문은 기준 클럭이 없는 고속, 저전력, 광대역으로 동작하는 클럭 및 데이터 복원회로의 설계를 제안한다. 기준 클럭이 없는 동작을 위해서 알렉산더 위상 검출기에 기반한 통계적 주파수 검출기를 사용하는 주파수 획득 방식이 사용된다. 통계적 주파수 검출기의 주파수 추적 양상을 분석하기 위해 패턴 히스토그램 분석 방법론을 제시하였고 시뮬레이션을 통해 검증하였다. 패턴 히스토그램 분석을 통해 얻은 정보를 바탕으로 자기공분산을 이용한 통계적 주파수 검출기를 제안한다. 직접 비례 경로와 디지털 적분 경로를 통해 제안된 기준 클럭이 없는 클럭 및 데이터 복원회로는 모든 측정 가능한 조건에서 주파수 잠금을 달성하는 데 성공하였고, 모든 경우에서 측정된 주파수 추적 시간은 7μs 이내이다. 40-nm CMOS 공정을 이용하여 만들어진 칩은 0.032 mm2의 면적을 차지한다. 제안하는 클럭 및 데이터 복원회로는 32 Gb/s의 속도에서 비트에러율 10-12 이하로 동작하였고, 에너지 효율은 32Gb/s의 속도에서 1.0V 공급전압을 사용하여 1.15 pJ/b을 달성하였다.CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 MOTIVATION 1 1.2 THESIS ORGANIZATION 13 CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUNDS 14 2.1 CLOCKING ARCHITECTURES IN SERIAL LINK INTERFACE 14 2.2 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR CLOCK AND DATA RECOVERY 24 2.2.1 OVERVIEW 24 2.2.2 JITTER 26 2.2.3 CDR JITTER CHARACTERISTICS 33 2.3 CDR ARCHITECTURES 39 2.3.1 PLL-BASED CDR – WITH EXTERNAL REFERENCE CLOCK 39 2.3.2 DLL/PI-BASED CDR 44 2.3.3 PLL-BASED CDR – WITHOUT EXTERNAL REFERENCE CLOCK 47 2.4 FREQUENCY ACQUISITION SCHEME 50 2.4.1 TYPICAL FREQUENCY DETECTORS 50 2.4.1.1 DIGITAL QUADRICORRELATOR FREQUENCY DETECTOR 50 2.4.1.2 ROTATIONAL FREQUENCY DETECTOR 54 2.4.2 PRIOR WORKS 56 CHAPTER 3 DESIGN OF THE REFERENCELESS CDR USING SFD 58 3.1 OVERVIEW 58 3.2 PROPOSED FREQUENCY DETECTOR 62 3.2.1 MOTIVATION 62 3.2.2 PATTERN HISTOGRAM ANALYSIS 68 3.2.3 INTRODUCTION OF AUTOCOVARIANCE TO STOCHASTIC FREQUENCY DETECTOR 75 3.3 CIRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION 83 3.3.1 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROPOSED REFERENCELESS CDR 83 3.3.2 CONTINUOUS-TIME LINEAR EQUALIZER (CTLE) 85 3.3.3 DIGITALLY-CONTROLLED OSCILLATOR (DCO) 87 3.4 MEASUREMENT RESULTS 89 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION 99 APPENDIX A DETAILED FREQUENCY ACQUISITION WAVEFORMS OF THE PROPOSED SFD 100 BIBLIOGRAPHY 108 초 록 122박

오프셋 제거기의 적응 제어 등화기와 보우-레이트 위상 검출기를 활용한 수신기 설계

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2021.8. 염제완.In this thesis, designs of high-speed, low-power wireline receivers (RX) are explained. To be specific, the circuit techniques of DC offset cancellation, merged-summer DFE, stochastic Baud-rate CDR, and the phase detector (PD) for multi-level signal are proposed. At first, an RX with adaptive offset cancellation (AOC) and merged summer decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) is proposed. The proposed AOC engine removes the random DC offset of the data path by examining the random data stream's sampled data and edge outputs. In addition, the proposed RX incorporates a shared-summer DFE in a half-rate structure to reduce power dissipation and hardware complexity of the adaptive equalizer. A prototype chip fabricated in 40 nm CMOS technology occupies an active area of 0.083 mm2. Thanks to the AOC engine, the proposed RX achieves the BER of less than 10-12 in a wide range of data rates: 1.62-10 Gb/s. The proposed RX consumes 18.6 mW at 10 Gb/s over a channel with a 27 dB loss at 5 GHz, exhibiting a figure-of-merit of 0.068 pJ/b/dB. Secondly, a 40 nm CMOS RX with Baud-rate phase-detector (BRPD) is proposed. The RX includes two PDs: the BRPD employing the stochastic technique and the BRPD suitable for multi-level signals. Thanks to the Baud-rate CDR’s advantage, by not using an edge-sampling clock, the proposed CDR can reduce the power consumption by lowering the hardware complexity. Besides, the proposed stochastic phase detector (SPD) tracks an optimal phase-locking point that maximizes the vertical eye opening. Furthermore, despite residual inter-symbol interference, proposed BRPD for multi-level signal secures vertical eye margin, which is especially vulnerable in the multi-level signal. Besides, the proposed BRPD has a unique lock point with an adaptive DFE, unlike conventional Mueller-Muller PD. A prototype chip fabricated in 40 nm CMOS technology occupies an active area of 0.24 mm2. The proposed PAM-4 RX achieves the bit-error-rate less than 10-11 in 48 Gb/s and the power efficiency of 2.42 pJ/b.본 논문은 고속, 저전력으로 동작하는 유선 수신기의 설계에 대해 설명하고 있다. 구체적으로 말하면, 오프셋 상쇄, 병합된 서머를 사용하는 결정 피드백 등화기 기술, 확률적 보우 레이트 클럭과 데이터 복원기, 그리고 다중 레벨 신호에 적합한 위상 검출기를 제안한다. 첫째로, 적응 오프셋 제거 및 병합된 서머를 사용하는 결정 피드백 등화기를 갖춘 수신기를 제안한다. 제안된 적응 오프셋 제거 엔진은 임의의 데이터 스트림의 샘플링 데이터, 에지 출력을 검사하여 데이터 경로 상의 오프셋을 제거한다. 또한 하프 레이트 구조의 병합된 서머를 사용하는 결정 피드백 등화기는 전력의 사용과 하드웨어의 복잡성을 줄인다. 40 nm CMOS 기술로 제작된 프로토타입 칩은 0.083 mm2 의 면적을 가진다. 적응 오프셋 제거기 덕분에 제안된 수신기는 10-12 미만의 BER을 달성한다. 또한 제안된 수신기는 5GHz에서 27 dB의 로스를 갖는 채널에서 10 Gb/s의 속도에서 18.6 mW를 소비하며 0.068 pJ/b/dB의 FoM을 달성하였다. 두번째로, 보우 레이트 위상 검출기가 있는 40 nm CMOS 수신기가 제안되었다. 수신기에는 두개의 보우 레이트 위상 검출기를 포함한다. 하나는 확률론적 기법을 사용하는 보우 레이트 위상 검출기이다. 보우 레이트 클럭 데이터 복원기의 장점 덕분에 에지 샘플링 클럭을 사용하지 않음으로서 파워의 소모와 하드웨어의 복잡성을 줄였다. 또한 확률적 위상 검출기는 수직 아이 오프닝을 최대화하는 최적의 위상 지점을 찾을 수 있었다. 다른 위상 검출기는 다중 레벨 신호에 적합한 방식이다. 심볼 간 간섭이 다중 레벨 신호에 매우 취약한 문제가 있더라도 제안된 다중 레벨 신호용 보우 레이트 위상 검출기는 수직 아이 마진을 확보한다. 게다가 제안된 보우 레이트 위상 검출기는 기존의 뮬러-뮐러 위상 검출기와 달리 적응형 결정 피드백 등화기가 있더라도 유일한 락 지점을 갖는다. 프로토타입 칩은 0.24mm2의 면적을 가진다. 제안된 PAM-4 수신기는 48 Gb/s의 속도에서 10-11 미만의 BER을 가지고, 2.42 pJ/b의 FoM을 가진다.CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 MOTIVATION 1 1.2 THESIS ORGANIZATION 5 CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUNDS 6 2.1 BASIC ARCHITECTURE IN SERIAL LINK 6 2.1.1 SERIAL COMMUNICATION 6 2.1.2 CLOCK AND DATA RECOVERY 8 2.1.3 MULTI-LEVEL PULSE-AMPLITUDE MODULATION 10 2.2 EQUALIZER 12 2.2.1 EQUALIZER OVERVIEW 12 2.2.2 DECISION-FEEDBACK EQUALIZER 15 2.2.3 ADAPTIVE EQUALIZER 18 2.3 CLOCK RECOVERY 21 2.3.1 2X OVERSAMPLING PD ALEXANDER PD 22 2.3.2 BAUD-RATE PD MUELLER MULLER PD 25 CHAPTER 3 AN ADAPTIVE OFFSET CANCELLATION SCHEME AND SHARED SUMMER ADAPTIVE DFE 28 3.1 OVERVIEW 28 3.2 AN ADAPTIVE OFFSET CANCELLATION SCHEME AND SHARED-SUMMER ADAPTIVE DFE FOR LOW POWER RECEIVER 31 3.3 SHARED SUMMER DFE 37 3.4 RECEIVER IMPLEMENTATION 42 3.5 MEASUREMENT RESULTS 45 CHAPTER 4 PAM-4 BAUD-RATE DIGITAL CDR 51 4.1 OVERVIEW 51 4.2 OVERALL ARCHITECTURE 53 4.2.1 PROPOSED BAUD-RATE CDR ARCHITECTURE 53 4.2.2 PROPOSED ANALOG FRONT-END STRUCTURE 59 4.3 STOCHASTIC PHASE DETECTION PAM-4 CDR 64 4.3.1 PROPOSED STOCHASTIC PHASE DETECTION 64 4.3.2 COMPARISON OF THE STOCHASTIC PD WITH SS-MMPD 70 4.4 PHASE DETECTION FOR MULTI-LEVEL SIGNALING 73 4.4.1 PROPOSED BAUD-RATE PHASE DETECTOR FOR MULTI-LEVEL SIGNAL 73 4.4.2 DATA LEVEL AND DFE COEFFICIENT ADAPTATION 79 4.4.3 PROPOSED PHASE DETECTOR 84 4.5 MEASUREMENT RESULT 88 4.5.1 MEASUREMENT OF THE PROPOSED STOCHASTIC BAUD-RATE PHASE DETECTION 94 4.5.2 MEASUREMENT OF THE PROPOSED BAUD-RATE PHASE DETECTION FOR MULTI-LEVEL SIGNAL 97 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 103 BIBLIOGRAPHY 105 초 록 109박

Modeling and Design of High-Speed CMOS Receivers for Short-Reach Photonic Links

This dissertation presents several research outcomes towards designing high-speed CMOS optical receivers for energy-efficient short-reach optical links. First, it provides a wide survey of recently published equalizer-based receivers and presents a novel methodology to accurately calculate their noise. The proposed methodology is then used to find the receiver that achieves the best sensitivity. Second, the trade-off between sensitivity and power dissipation of the receiver is optimized to reduce the energy consumption per bit of the overall link. Design trade-offs for the receiver, transmitter, and the overall link are presented, and comparisons are made to study how much receiver sensitivity can be sacrificed to save its power dissipation before this power reduction is outpaced by the transmitter’s increase in power. Unlike conventional wisdom, our results show that energy-efficient links require low-power receivers with input capacitance much smaller than that required for noise-optimum performance. Third, the thesis presents a novel equalization technique for optical receivers. A linear equalizer (LE) is realized by adding a pole in the feedback paths of an active feedback-based wideband amplifier. By embedding the peaking in the main amplifier (MA), the front-end meets the sensitivity and gain of conventional LE-based receivers with better energy efficiency by eliminating the standalone equalizer stage(s). Electrical measurements are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed technique in restoring the bandwidth and improving the performance over the conventional design