An ultra-wide range (0.01–240 Gbps) transmitter with latched AC-coupled driver and dummy data transient generator

Abstract

This paper proposes an ultra-wide range transmitter with a latched AC-coupled driver (LACD) and a dummy data transient generator (DDTG). The LACD expands the low-frequency range by preventing the capacitor discharge issue of the high-speed AC-coupled driver and the DDTG enhances the high-frequency range by generating a dummy transient pattern to stabilize the power node fluctuation induced by the dense and sparse pattern dependency in the case of coding-less application. A 24-channel test chip designed with 40-nm CMOS technology achieved an ultrawide frequency range (0.01-10 Gbps/channel) and ultra-wide bandwidth from 0.01 Gbps (0.01 Gbps × 1 channel) to 240 Gbps (10 Gbs × 24 channels) and a high area efficiency (0.0027 mm 2 /Gbps/channel). At the data rates of 5 and 10 Gbps, the jitters with DDTG were 50% lower than attained without DDTG.