학술논문

Design of a Noncoherent 100-Gb/s 3-m Dual-Band PAM-4 Dielectric Waveguide Link in 28-nm CMOS
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of. 59(5):1398-1408 May, 2024
Subject
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Computing and Processing
Optical fiber dispersion
Optical fiber couplers
Optical fiber networks
Optical fiber polarization
Optical fiber devices
Bandwidth
Optical transmitters
CMOS
dielectric waveguide (DWG)
diplexer
dual band
millimeter-wave (mm-Wave)
polymer microwave fiber (PMF)
rectifier
transceiver
wireline
Language
ISSN
0018-9200
1558-173X
Abstract
This work details the design of a plastic fiber link in 28-nm CMOS, operating in two adjacent bands centered on 117.5 and 152.5 GHz. Each band supports multilevel (PAM-4) intensity-modulated signaling, which can be detected noncoherently, obviating the need for carrier recovery and phase alignment. A rectification-based detector is proposed to support linear noncoherent demodulation. A manifold diplexer is designed on-chip to increase the level of integration. The dual-band link achieves data rates up to 100 Gb/s over a fiber length of 3 m at a power consumption of 574 mW and a bit error rate (BER) better than 2.2e-4, corresponding to the standardized KP4 forward error correction (FEC) threshold. With only the low-band (LB) circuitry active, the link reaches up to 50 Gb/s over a distance of 7 m at a degraded BER of 2.2e-3 and up to 10 Gb/s over 11 m at a BER of 1e-6, representing the highest reported data rates for these link lengths. An energy efficiency reaching as low as 0.8 pJ/bit/m is reported for the 7-m case.