Signal Integrity Analysis-Based Channel and Equalizer Co-Design Methodology for High-Speed Serial Links

In this paper, we propose a signal integrity (SI)-based channel and equalizer co-design methodology for efficient design in high-speed serial links. The proposed approach defines SI metrics to evaluate the characteristics of channels and performs correlation analysis to derive design guidelines. By leveraging these guidelines, the proposed method enables the efficient selection of channel and equalizer parameters, strategically narrowing the design search space for problems with extensive design spaces. To validate the proposed method, pulse amplitude modulation (PAM)-4 eye diagram results and turnaround time (TAT) were compared with genetic algorithm (GA) across four different scenarios. The results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves designs with comparable or superior performance to GA while significantly reducing TAT.