A 5.8-Gbps low-noise scalable low-voltage signaling serial link transmitter for MIPI M-PHY in 40-nm CMOS

Abstract

A scalable low-voltage signaling (SLVS) serial link transmitter for MIPI M-PHY is presented in this paper. It delivers 200-400 mV pp signals at date rates of 1.25-5.8 Gbps. The integrated circuit entity consists of the actual SLVS driver, an ADPLL-based clock synthesizer with a frequency multiplier, and an internal test signal generator with pseudo-random binary sequences. The circuit has been fabricated in a 40-nm CMOS process. The overall active die area is 0.2 mm 2 , while the actual driver occupies only 190 lm 2 . In this work it was confirmed that a low-power SLVS driver meets the stringent commonmode noise generation limits set for serial interfaces used in mobile devices. Noise power density remains below -138 dBm/Hz at all data rates. Total power consumption of the transmitter is kept low by utilizing dynamic CMOS predrivers and a low drop-out voltage regulator. It achieves power efficiency of 0.44-1.4 mW/Gbps with external clock and 2.6-4.7 mW/Gbps with clock synthesizer.