A 5-Gb/s CML transceiver with FFE and CTLE

In large-scale nuclear and particle physics experiments, data collection is one of the most important tasks in front-end electronics because of the large number of readout channels, and a high-speed transceiver is indispensable for data collection application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). To address the challenges of channel loss and intersymbol interference (ISI), a 5 Gb/s current mode logic (CML) transmitter and receiver has been designed with 180 nm CMOS technology. This design incorporates an adjustable continuous time linear equalizer (CTLE) in the receiver and a 3-tap feed-forward equalization (FFE) in the transmitter. The test results demonstrate that the transceiver achieves a total jitter of 34 ps (peak-to-peak) at a data rate of 5 Gb/s, with a power consumption of 109 mW from a 1.8 V supply while driving 450 mVppd. Occupying a compact die area of 0.053 mm², this transceiver offers a robust solution for high-speed data transfer needs.