Architectural Modeling of a Multi-Tone/Single-Sideband Serial Link Transceiver for Lossy Wireline Data Links

This paper presents a serial link transceiver (TRX) architecture that enables high-speed data transmission over a lossy backplane channel without the presence of equalization circuits. The proposed architecture employs multi-tone signaling to reduce inter-symbol interference (ISI) and to increase receiver (RX) timing margin. A single-sideband (SSB) modulation has also been employed for saving of required bandwidth per sub channel, so as to minimize inter-channel interference (ICI). System-level simulation results show that the proposed TRX can easily transmit 20 Gb/s data stream over a lossy backplane channel that exhibits 28-dB attenuation at 10 GHz while requiring neither of continuous-time linear equalizer (CTLE) and decision feedback equalizer (DFE). By transmitting 3-to-5 Gb/s data stream over each of four sub-channels, at least 44% unit interval (UI) eye openings are achieved for all sub-channels when 20 Gb/s aggregate data is transmitted.