A 25 Gb/s 5.8 mW CMOS Equalizer

Low-power equalization remains in high demand for wireline receivers operating at tens of gigabits per second in copper media. This paper presents a design incorporating a continuous-time linear equalizer and a two-tap half-rate/quarter-rate decision-feedback equalizer that exploits charge steering techniques to reduce the power consumption. Realized in 45 nm technology, the prototype draws 5.8 mW from a 1 V supply and compensates for 24 dB of loss with BER-12.