Multi-channel FSK inter/intra-chip communication by exploiting field-confined slow-wave transmission line

• Main Authors: Chen, Qian, Boon, Chirn Chye, Zhang, Xueyong, Li, Chenyang, Liang, Yuan, Liu, Zhe, Guo, Ting
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Integrated circuits; CMOS Transceiver; Frequency Shift Keying
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/144792
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Using on-chip slow-wave transmission line (SW-TL) has paved a new way towards millimeter-wave (mm-wave) to terahertz (THz) low power and high speed inter-/intra-chip communications. This work presents an on-chip SW-TL featured by periodic comb-shape grooves with capability to strongly localize electric-field. A gradient groove structure is proposed to serve as the mode converter and performs the mode transformation between the quasi-TEM wave and the slow-wave with low return loss. Due to field confinement, when two SW-TL are only 2.4 μm apart, more than 19 dB crosstalk suppression is observed compared with two conventional TL with the same metal spacing. A dual-channel 160 GHz frequency-shift keying (FSK) transceiver is designed in 65 nm CMOS technology. The preliminary results show that by exploiting SW-TL as the silicon channel, the receiver can recover error-free 4 Gb/s dual-channel data, whereas the eye diagram of the transceiver using traditional transmission line (TL) is fully distorted. The transceiver consumes 36 mW DC power from a 1.2 V power supply.