High-speed contactless I/O for computing devices

Enabling content-rich consumer devices in a portable form-factor is enhanced by contactless I/O to support distributed computing and peripherals. Within such a personal computing space (1mm-1m), high-speed solutions (>10Gb/s) may be achieved with either near-field coupling-based proximity communication or far-field mm-wave wireless communication. In order to optimize proximity link performance based on data-rate, communication distance, coupler footprint and scalability to multi-channel I/O, this work develops analytical models of the contactless channel. The paper also highlights the tradeoffs between energy-efficiency and achievable communication distance in proximity and mm-wave wireless I/Os, along with two illustrative link designs at 32Gb/s and 27.8Gb/s respectively.