An 18-Gb/s NRZ Transceiver with a Channel-Included 2-UI Impulse-Response Filtering FFE and 1-Tap DFE Compensating up to 32-dB Loss

This brief presents a channel-included filtering feed-forward equalizer (FFE) scheme suitable for data transmission through a heavily-dispersive lossy channel. The proposed scheme adjusts the tap weights so that the impulse response seen at the receiver has only a 2-unit interval (UI)-long impulse response with other parts negligible. The confinement of each bit response to a 2-UI period effectively achieves a lossless duobinary-like eye opening and enables data recovery with only a 1-tap decision-feedback equalizer (DFE). The proposed transceiver, implemented in 28-nm LP CMOS technology, achieved data recovery of 18 Gb/s up to 32-dB loss with only 3-tap FFE at the transmitter and 1-tap DFE at the receiver.