MIMO pre-equalization and DFE for high-speed off-chip communication

In this contribution, we present a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transceiver scheme for high-speed chip-to-chip communication over low-cost electrical interconnects. Linear MIMO pre-equalization at the transmitter is combined with decision feedback equalization (DFE) at the receiver to counteract the adverse effect of inter symbol interference (ISI) and crosstalk (XT). Considering an energy constraint at the transmit side, we derive elegant closed-form expressions for the equalization filters under a minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. Numerical analysis shows that the combination of linear MIMO pre-equalization and MIMO DFE allows to significantly improve the reliability of future high-speed off-chip communication.