A combined 10/125 Mbaud twisted-pair line driver with programmable performance/power features

With shrinking supply voltages and portable local area networks (LANs) becoming more prevalent, it is becoming essential to implement transceivers dissipating minimal power. One important aspect of a transceiver is the twisted-pair driver. For 10/100 Ethernet, a typical push-pull driver can be implemented drawing 10 mA in 100Base-TX mode and 32 mA in 10Base-T mode. However, such a driver is difficult to implement using supplies lower than 3.3 V. Here, a driver is implemented in 3.3 V with the anticipation that the architecture is applicable below 3.3 V. Mechanisms allow for lower power dissipation options as a trade-off for performance.