A MIXED-SIGNAL DECISION-FEEDBACK EQUALIZER THAT USES A LOOK-AHEAD ARCHITECTURE

A mixed-signal decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) that uses a look-ahea d architecture is described, The parallelism in the look-ahead DFE (LA DFE) achieves an increase in the data rate over a conventional DFE wi th a small increase in area, Fully differential analog circuits perfor m the convolution operation in the LA DFE, and the coefficient adaptio n is carried out by digital circuits, The LA DFE occupies 23 mm(2) in a 2-mu m CMOS process and operates at 50 Mb/s while dissipating 260 mW .