A 10 Gb/s 4-PAM transceiver with adaptive pre-emphasis

A 10 Gb/s 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) transceiver was implemented using a 0.13 μm CMOS process. The implemented 4-PAM transmitter employs current mode logics (CMLs) for high-speed operations. The proposed 4-PAM transceiver achieves a channel efficiency of 2 bit/symbol with adaptive pre-emphasis. The pre-emphasis was designed to be proportional to each 4-level's amplitude. The measured maximum data-rate was 10 Gb/s over 0.7-m cable and 3-cm printed circuit board (PCB) traces. The transmitter and receiver consume 245 mW and 69 mW, respectively. The measured bit-error rate (BER) was less than 10
^-12
at 10 Gb/s data rate.