A fully-differential adaptive equalizer using the spectrum-balancing technique

A low-voltage high-speed CMOS fully-differential adaptive equalizer based on the spectrum-balancing technique is presented in this paper. It was designed to compensate the strong attenuation of the transmitted signal due to fiber losses. The proposed equalizer, formed by a line equalizer and an adaptation loop, targets 2.5 Gb/s transmission for a simple NRZ modulation through a 50-m SI-POF. It was designed in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS process, fed with 1V and has a power consumption below 17.3 mW.