A 1.2 Gb/s Data Transmission Unit in CMOS 0.18 μm technology for the ALICE Inner Tracking System front-end ASIC

The upgrade of the ALICE Inner Tracking System is based on a Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor and ASIC designed in a CMOS 0.18 μ m process. In order to provide the required output bandwidth (1.2 Gb/s for the inner layers and 400 Mb/s for the outer ones) on a single high speed serial link, a custom Data Transmission Unit (DTU) has been developed in the same process. The DTU includes a clock multiplier PLL, a double data rate serializer and a pseudo-LVDS driver with pre-emphasis and is designed to be SEU tolerant.