Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering Seminar - Energy-Efficient and Scalable Wireline Receiver Innovations: From Wide-Band, Jitter-Tolerant CDRs to Adaptive DSP and Autonomous Equalizer Design
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This talk highlights recent advances in energy-efficient, adaptive wireline receivers from multi-Gb/s to 100+ Gb/s operation. First, we introduce a reference-less half-rate receiver with an unlimited-range frequency detector, enabling 13× continuous-rate operation and sub-pJ/bit CDR efficiency. We then present a 10–26 Gb/s design featuring a dual-feedback nested-loop CDR and edge-first equalization, which improves high-frequency jitter tolerance and achieves 103 fJ/b/dB at 26 Gb/s over a 32-dB loss channel. For 112-Gb/s PAM-4 links, a dynamic ADC/FFE adaptation scheme is described, using real-time SNR monitoring to adjust ADC resolution and FFE taps for over 40% power savings while maintaining BER targets. Finally, an autonomous FFE design agent is introduced, generating optimized parallel FFE RTL within hours using unfolding, fast FIR, and nonlinear optimization. These technologies demonstrate scalable and adaptive solutions for next-generation wireline receivers. These contributions demonstrate a path toward scalable, adaptive, and automation-enabled wireline receivers suited for next-generation high-bandwidth systems.
Wei-Zen Chen received the Ph.D. degree in electronics engineering from National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 1999. From 2015 to 2018, he was the Institute Director. In addition, he held roles as the Deputy Executive Director of the National SoC Program and the Principal Investigator of the National Project on Intelligent Electronics in Taiwan. He is currently a Professor with the Institute of Electronics and the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU). His current research interests focus on mixed-signal integrated circuits for wireless and wireline communication systems, with a particular emphasis on high-speed interconnects, optical communication, and radar sensing systems. Dr. Chen was a TPC Member at prestigious conferences, including the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuit Conference (A-SSCC), and the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). He is a member of the Phi Tau Phi Honorary Scholar Society. He served as the Chair for IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Taipei Chapter from 2008 to 2012 and Taiwan IC Design Society (TICD) from 2022 to 2024. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters and a Guest Editor of IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.