Contactless inter-tier communication for heterogeneous 3-D ICs

A heterogeneous contactless transceiver circuit is designed to provide half duplex communication for a 3-D system considering specific bonding constraints. The system is composed of two tiers and is integrated face-to-back to support fluidic sensing. Communication between the tiers is achieved through inductive links. Each tier is considered to be fabricated in a different technology node to enable low manufacturing cost and benefit from the advantages each technology offers. Both the uplink and downlink transceivers achieve data rates that reach 1 Gbps with non-return-to-zero data encoding. Energy efficiency is the primary objective, with the uplink dissipating 4.93 mW and the downlink 10.53 mW. A 5.2 × power reduction is achieved when using heterogeneous technologies, compared to a state-of-the-art 0.35 βm transceiver, while the dissipated energy is decreased by 34% as compared to a state-of-the-art 65 nm transceiver.