Linear MIMO equalization for high-speed chip-to-chip communication

In this contribution, we present a linear multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) equalization scheme at the receiver side for high-speed electrical chip-to-chip communication. As opposed to traditional single-input single-output (SISO) equalization per lane, this MIMO approach enables cooperating receivers to treat crosstalk (XT) between neighboring channels as an information-bearing signal instead of a disturbing signal, allowing to mitigate both inter symbol interference and XT. Given a simulated 4 × 4 MIMO electrical chip-to-chip interconnect channel, we point out that, for a given total number of equalizer taps, MIMO equalization can outperform SISO equalization. Moreover, by further increasing the total number of equalizer taps, MIMO equalization allows to obtain performance gains that are substantially larger than for SISO equalization.