A 10-Gb/s low-power low-voltage CTLE using gate and bulk driven transistors

The continuous time linear equalizer (CTLE) which compensates for the high frequency loss of electrical channels is one of the key components in the design of digital serializer / desrializer (SerDes) circuits. A new technique is described to improve the CTLE performance without any area or power overhead. This technique utilizes the bulk pin of transistors as a second gate. The proposed CTLE is designed and simulated in 130 nm CMOS technology. Post-layout simulation results demonstrate that the proposed technique can improve the eye opening of the conventional CTLE by approximately 68% at 10-Gb/s. The proposed CTLE compensates for the 12 dB loss of a 12 inches backplane at 10-Gb/s. The power consumption is only of 4.1 mW and 2 mW for a 1.2 V and 0.7 V power supply, respectively.