A 2.5-Gb/s multi-rate continuous-time adaptive equalizer for short reach optical links

This paper presents a new multi-rate continuous-time adaptive equalizer for short-haul gigabit optical communications. It is designed to compensate the attenuation of a 50-m 1-mm core step-index plastic optical fiber (SI-POF) for input data ranges from 400 Mb/s up to 2.5 Gb/s. It includes three adaptation loops to compensate the possible variations in level and spectrum of the input signal. The prototype has been implemented in a cost-effective 0.18-μm CMOS process. The system is fed with only 1 V and has a total power consumption of 60 mW.