A 10 Gbps loss of signal detector for high-speed AC-coupled serial transceivers in 28nm CMOS technology

This paper presents a 10 Gbps loss of signal (LOS) detector for high-speed AC-coupled serial transceivers. The detector is designed in 28nm CMOS and is capable of operating with a 29.5mV internal eye opening and a 67mV external eye opening at the input pads. It consumes 69uW from a 0.9V supply at 10 Gbps and properly asserts an LOS state in 6.8 nsec. A novel comparator topology, which is a part of the LOS circuit, is also presented. It compares a differential input to a differential reference voltage. Design and layout were implemented using Synopsys Custom Designer with 28nm CMOS device models. The LOS detector can reduce power consumption and bit error rate (BER) of serial transceivers.