A 13.5-mW 10-Gb/s 4-PAM Serial Link Transmitter in 0.13- $\mu\hbox{m}$ CMOS Technology

A 13.5-mW 10-Gb/s four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (4-PAM) serial link transmitter is presented. To improve the power efficiency, a voltage-mode 4-PAM driver is proposed. It consists of voltage-scaled pull-up and pull-down networks, instead of conventional current switching networks. Not employing a tail current source, the proposed 4-PAM driver achieves the higher output voltage swing and lower power dissipation than conventional 4-PAM drivers. As a result, the proposed 4-PAM transmitter implemented in a 0.13-μm CMOS process achieved 10-Gb/s data rate with only 13.5-mW power dissipation.