A 1.2–5Gb/s 1.4–2pJ/b serial link in 22nm CMOS with a direct data-sequencing blind oversampling CDR

A scalable-rate serial link - comprising of a bidirectional transmitter (TX)/receiver (RX) and two all-digital PLLs (ADPLLs) - operates at 1.2-5Gb/s from 0.55-0.7V DC supply with 1.4-2pJ/b total energy efficiency, respectively. Power efficiency is improved by avoiding the use of any analog circuitry, a low swing voltage-mode transmitter, and a direct data-sequencing blind oversampling (DDS-BOS) clock and data recovery (CDR). Using DDS in feed-forward BOS-CDR obviates area and power consuming FIFOs, improves jitter tolerance (JTOL), and permits up to 7500ppm frequency tolerance (FTOL) between the TX-RX clocks - rendering it attractive for fast-locking continuous/burst operation.