A 103 fJ/b/dB, 10-26 Gb/s Receiver With a Dual Feedback Nested Loop CDR for Wide Bandwidth Jitter Tolerance Enhancement

A 10-26 Gb/s energy-efficient receiver incorporating a dual-feedback nested loop clock and data recovery circuit (DF-CDR) is proposed. Combining a direct modulation path on voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and phase interpolator (PI)-based phase rotator inside a phase locked loop (PLL), it improves high-frequency jitter tolerance by 0.15 UI. An edge-first equalization scheme is proposed to reduce power and hardware overhead of decision feedback equalizers. Meanwhile, it facilitates adaptive equalization of continuous time linear equalizer, and background offset calibration of the receiver frontend. A three-stage latch comparator is adopted to enable high-speed direct feedback equalizer. By applying PRBS-31 test pattern through a 32 dB loss channel, the receiver is error-free and features the best energy efficiency of 103 fJ/b/dB at 26 Gb/s.