A 6.25Gb/s pipelined half-rate decision feedback equalizer for high speed backplane data communications

A pipelined two post-tap half-rate decision feedback equalizer (HRDFE) is proposed. The circuit is composed of equalizing circuit and sampling circuit working at half rate clock, with cross-coupling output of interleaving sampler feedback to the input. A behavioral model of the HRDFE is built in MATLAB to prove the feasibility of the circuit. The design is verified by using 0.18μm CMOS process in SPECTRE. Simulation results show eye opening increases at speed up to 6.25Gb/s with data transmitted over a 34" FR4 backplane. The total power consumption is 8.91mW with a 1.8V supply