Traveling-wave retimer with coupled nonlinear transmission line

A new type of a retimer, which employs a nonlinear transmission line (NLTL) coupled to a linear transmission line, is proposed. The pulse on a NLTL propagates as a soliton through the effects of the nonlinear capacitors periodically loaded with the NLTL and the elecromagnetic coupling continuously modulates this solitonic pulse. For the retimer, the data and the clock are applied at the same ends of the NLTL and the linear line, respectively, and then the clock signal couples with the solitonic data to achieve synchronization. Wave propagation in coupled NLTLs is characterized to provide design criteria for the retimer. Based on a new model equation, a perturbation theory is developed to explain the pinning mechanism in coupled NLTLs. We then present several results obtained by the numerical integration of the transmission equation of the coupled NLTL in order to evaluate the performance of the coupled NLTL as a retimer.