A 20-Gb/s/Line Single-Ended Transceiver With Coupling-Balanced Crosstalk-Cancellation for Shield-Less 1.5- <i>μ</i> m-Pitch Interconnect

This article presents a 20-Gb/s/line current-mode (CM) transceiver for dense short-reach on-chip interconnect. The transceiver achieves a systematic crosstalk cancellation (XTC) by balancing the capacitive and inductive coupling. As a receiver frontend, a current-sensing amplifier is designed with an optimum input resistance value for XTC. Without any additional circuits for XTC and equalization, the transceiver implemented in a 40 nm CMOS technology shows a data rate of 20 Gb/s/line and an energy efficiency of 246 fJ/b, even with shield-less dense channels with 1.5-μm pitch. In addition, this article analyzes the crosstalk for dense short-reach channels and establishes the theorem of coupling-balanced XTC (CBXTC).