In recent years, due to the appearance of high-definition (HD) TV and 3D video content, the volume of data being processed for personal use has rapidly grown. This growth has resulted in greater demand for high speed transmission of data both between and within a wide variety of equipment. In order to provide for this demand, various types of sophisticated transmission schemes have been proposed to compensate for the large waveform distortion of input signals fed to the receiver, and to reach high-speed communications of more than 10 Gb/s to facilitate next-generation USB and PCI Express.
However, application of such transmission schemes is quite limited as their complexity is not compatible with widely-employed binary transmission schemes used in current USB and PCI Express.
NEC and NECEL's newly developed high-speed communication interface technology utilizing binary transmission schemes enable data rates of 16 Gb/s, which is approximately three times faster than existing communication interface standards, such as USB 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0.
Conventional equalizers correct the distortion of a receiver's input signal waveform by feeding back received data to the input signal waveform. However, as data rates grow higher, the time allowed for feedback operation becomes shorter, making the correction of distortion difficult.
In the newly developed technology, a feed-forward type waveform equalization is employed within the analog domain: the branched input signal is delayed by one data period and is then added to the original input signal waveform. This procedure greatly reduces the nearest-neighbor inter-bit interference in the signal waveform and thus successfully alleviates the issue of feedback-time constraint inherent in conventional equalizers.
NEC and NECEL view these new technologies as a cornerstone in support of ultra high speed communication interfaces, and the companies will continue to promote innovative R&D as part of their efforts to produce exciting new products.
NEC and NECEL presented the results of this research on February 9 at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2010), held February 7 -11 in San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
* Multilevel Transmission: A transmission method that splits data into multiple variables beyond 0 or 1.
About NEC Electronics
NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723) specializes in semiconductor products encompassing advanced technology solutions for the high-end computing and broadband networking markets, system solutions for the mobile handset, PC peripherals, automotive and digital consumer markets, and platform solutions for a wide range of customer applications. NEC Electronics Corporation has subsidiaries worldwide including NEC Electronics America, Inc. (www.am.necel.com) and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH (www.eu.necel.com). For additional information about NEC Electronics worldwide, visit www.necel.com.
About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation is one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of a diversified global base of customers. NEC delivers tailored solutions in the key fields of computer, networking and electron devices, by integrating its technical strengths in IT and Networks, and by providing advanced semiconductor solutions through NEC Electronics Corporation. The NEC Group employs more than 140,000 people worldwide. For additional information, please visit the NEC website at: http://www.nec.com.
