Inductorless CTLE for 20 Gb/s SerDes for 5G backhaul

摘要

A low-power 3-stage continuous time linear equalisation (CTLE) was designed in 28 nm CMOS technology for a high speed SerDes in a 5G backhaul. The CTLE active inductor is a transconductance-based, for high-frequency operation and for area reduction. The active inductor can be tuned around 10 GHz while consuming 11.17 mW from 0.9 V power supply. The CTLE compensates about 19.5 dB of attenuation due to the channel at a data rate of 20 Gb/s per link, with a power efficiency of 18.6 fJ/bit/dB, which is 3x better power efficiency than the previous works reported in the literature.