A 3 Gb/s transmitter with a tapless pre-emphasis CML output driver

Abstract

A 3 Gb/s wireline transmitter (Tx) with a tapless pre-emphasis current-mode logic output driver is presented in this paper. The proposed output driver can support 2.5, 6 and 10 dB pre-emphasis without any additional current tap. It can reduce the current consumption of the output driver by 30 %. The 1.5 GHz phase-locked loop (PLL), multi-phase generator, and 26-to-1 serializer are utilized to serialize 26-bit parallel data to 1-bit 3 Gb/s serial data stream. The rms and peak-to-peak jitters of PLL are 2.97 and 22.5 ps, respectively. The eye opening of the proposed output driver at 3 Gb/s is 0.8UI with a 10 dB loss channel. The current consumption of the output driver is only 5.14 mA, and the Tx is 9 mA. The area of the Tx is 0.72 mm2 using the 0.11 μm CMOS process.