Short-reach Copper Transceivers
This research topic focuses on very fast (>56Gb/s) electrical interconnections through PCBs, backplanes or cable assemblies. For very short distances of e.g. a few meters or less, optical solutions are not yet cost-effective. However, the frequency dependent loss of electrical interconnections significantly limits the available bandwidth and severely distort the transmitted signals. Our specific expertise in this field is on the design of very fast Tx and Rx circuits and the efficient realization of modulation, demodulation and equalizer functions for low-complexity, power-efficient modulation formats such as NRZ, duobinary or PAM-4. Various chip-to-chip, chip-to-module and card-to-card demonstrators have been developed and were used to show error-free transmission beyond 56Gb/s over commercial backplanes and even beyond 100Gb/s using duobinary modulation over cable backplanes.
Staff
Guy Torfs, Xin Yin, Johan Bauwelinck
Researchers
Timothy De Keulenaer, Ramses Pierco, Joris Van Kerrebrouck, Renato Vaernewyck, Arno Vyncke
Projects
Key publications
- T. De Keulenaer, G. Torfs, Y. Ban, R. Pierco, R. Vaernewyck, A. Vyncke, Z. Li, J. H. Sinsky, B. Kozicki, X. Yin, and J. Bauwelinck, "84 Gbit/s SiGe BiCMOS duobinary serial data link including serialiser/deserialiser (SERDES) and 5-tap FFE", IET Electronic Letters, vol. 51, no. 4, February 19, 2015, pp. 343-345.
- Y. Ban, T. De Keulenaer, Z. Li, J. Van Kerrebrouck, J. H. Sinsky, B. Kozicki, J. Bauwelinck, and G. Torfs, "A Wide-band, 5-tap transversal filter with improved testability for equalization up to 84 Gb/s", IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, vol. 25, no. 11, October 2, 2015, pp. 739-741
- T. De Keulenaer, J. De Geest, G. Torfs, J. Bauwelinck, Y. Ban, J. Sinsky, and B. Kozicki, "56+ Gb/s serial transmission using duo-binary signaling", DesignCon 2015, vol. 10TH-3, January 27-30, 2015.
- J. Van Kerrebrouck, T. De Keulenaer, J. De Geest, R. Pierco, R. Vaernewyck, A. Vyncke, M. Fogg, M. Rengarajan, G. Torfs, and J. Bauwelinck, "100 Gb/s serial transmission over Copper using duo-binary signaling", Designcon, Santa Clara, California, USA, January 19-21, 2016.
