Feedforward Cherry-Hooper Continuous Time Linear Equalizer in 28-nm CMOS

This paper presents a feedforward Cherry-Hooper Continuous-Time Linear Equalizer (FFCH-CTLE) for a 32-Gb/s receiver. Employing several bandwidth extension techniques, such as cascading, feedback, feedforward, and inductive peaking, 13.3-dB gain boosting at 16-GHz Nyquist frequency is achieved. Simulation shows that the performance of the proposed FFCH-CTLE operating with a high-loss channel exhibits superior performance compared with other CTLEs of conventional structures. The circuit and layout of the FFCH-CTLE are designed in 28-nm CMOS technology occupying the chip area of 0.0042 mm2, including two inductors with a total power consumption of 10.2 mW.