A 60 mW per Lane, 4$,times,$23-Gb/s 2$ ^7 -$1 PRBS Generator

An ultra-low-power, 2$ ^7-$1 PRBS generator with four, appropriately delayed, parallel output streams was designed. It was fabricated in a 150-GHz$f_T$SiGe BiCMOS technology and measured to work up to 23 Gb/s. The four-channel PRBS generator consumes 235 mW from 2.5 V, which results in only 60 mW per output lane. The circuit is based on a 2.5-mW BiCMOS CML latch topology, which, to the best of our knowledge, represents the lowest power for a latch operating above 10 Gb/s. A power consumption and speed comparison of series and parallel PRBS generation techniques is presented. Low-power BiCMOS CML latch topologies are analyzed using the OCTC method.