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PAM-5 at 5 Gbaud




Oscar,

I have some question marks regarding your presentation in Dallas:

    "10 Gb/s PMD using PAM-5 modulation"
    by Oscar Agazzi
    Broadcom

a) 5 GHz equalizer

You use in your simulations a Decision Feedback Equalizer (DFE) at 5 GHz. You 
mention, to support your proposal, that DFEs are also used in Fast Ethernet 
and 1000BASE-T. However, the latter DFEs run at 125 MHz (8 nsec baud period). 
The DFE that you are proposing must run 40 times faster (200 psec baud 
period).

A DFE has a feedback loop (slide # 15 in your presentation) that consists of 
at least one adder, a 5-level slicer and the internal delay of one flip-flop. 
The serial operations in this feedback loop (addition + slicer + internal 
delay of the flip-flop) have to be completed within one baud period, in this 
case 200 psec.

There was a very heated debate within the 1000BASE-T Task Force two years ago 
whether the DFE could be implemented at 125 MHz. I remember that during these 
debates you and Broadcom vehemently sustained that it would be extremely 
difficult to implement the feedback loop in 8 nsec. Now you propose to 
implement it in 200 psec.

I have doubts whether this DFE could be moved from the world of simulations 
into a real implemented system. And in CMOS, as slide # 2 of your 
presentation seems to suggest. Even using parallel processing.

    For comparison, the architecture I proposed, PAM-5 4-WDM at
    1.25 Gbaud, using the 1000BASE-T PCS, (see my presentations
    in Kauai and Dallas) has two options:

        1) Viterbi decoding, with 6 db coding gain
        2) symbol-by-symbol decoding, with 3 db coding gain

    There is already a significant amount of previous work
    on fast parallel processing of Viterbi decoders that can
    be found in the open literature. See, for example, Ref. 5
    in my presentation in Kauai:

        H. David, G. Fettweis and H. Meyr
        "A CMOS IC for Gb/s Viterbi decoding: System design
        and VLSI implementation"
        IEEE Trans on VLSI Systems, vol 4, pp 17-31, March 96

    Specifically, following the detailed guidelines of this Ref,
    the complete Viterbi decoder can be implemented using a
    312.5 MHz clock (3.2 nsec clock period). This is also a very
    handy clock, since we need it anyway in the parallel interface.
    These 3.2 nsec are enough to implement the path metrics
    update, which is the bottleneck in fast Viterbi decoders.

    However, I also suggested to you that we could propose
    in the 10 GbE Task Force to use the 3-dB coding option
    of this PCS, if you prefer. The 3-dB coding option does not
    use Viterbi decoding.

The burdens on the receiver analog front end of your proposal are even more 
daunting.

b) 5 GHz ADC

The main claim of your proposal is that it can reach 500 meters of installed 
multimode fiber (500 MHz*km bandwidth)

At 5 Gbaud and 1300 nm wavelength the optical eye pattern of PAM-5 is 
completely closed even before reaching the 200 meters link length.

At 500 meters the ISI (Inter Symbol Interference) is as bad or worse than the 
ISI we get in Fast Ethernet using 100 meters of cat-5 Copper wire. In Fast 
Ethernet we needed a true 6-bit (64 levels) ADC for the DFE to be able to 
deal with this strong ISI.

Slice # 15 of your presentation shows an ADC. 

I think that you will have to use at least a 6-bit ADC in your system. This 
also looks extremely difficult to implement at 5 GHz. For example, in the 
last International Solid-State Circuits Conference held this month in San 
Francisco, the maximum sampling rate achieved by a nominal 6-bit CMOS ADC was 
800 Msamples/s (only 5-bit effective using a 200 MHz signal). It was 
fabricated in a 0.25 um process.

    For comparison, PAM-5 4-WDM at 1.25 Gbaud does not have
    any ISI up to 400 meters and uses an 18 level "soft slicer".
    This is barely a 4-bit ADC. And it is sampled at 1.25 Gbaud.

    All the simulations I presented in Kauai were obtained using
    this simple 18-level ADC. And, as I showed in Part IV of the
    presentation, 18 levels are enough to reach an actual coding
    gain close enough to the ideal.

    This should not come as a surprise. It is a well known fact
    that Viterbi decoders for binary encoded information (PAM-2)
    need very simple "soft-slicers" to get most of the coding
    gain of the convolutional code. A "soft-slicer" for PAM-2
    coding needs only 8 levels to get a performance near to the
    ideal Viterbi decoder. See, for example:

        J. A. Heller and I. M. Jacobs
        "Viterbi decoding for satellite and space communications"
        IEEE Trans on Commun Tech, vol COM-19, pp 835-848,
        October 1971

        S. B. Wicker
        "Error control systems for digital communications and
        storage"
        Prentice Hall, 1995

    (A "hard-slicer" is the standard n-level slicer for PAM-n.
    A "soft-slicer" uses more intermediate levels to get more
    accurate decisions).

c) Dynamic range of the Receiver Analog Front End

You will need 5 Gbaud Transimpedance Amplifiers (TIA) and AGCs (slice # 15 of 
your presentation). What should be the needed dynamic range of these blocks ?

A 6-bit ADC means about 36 dB dynamic range:

    20*log(64) = 36 dB

However, you would need to add some margin in your design of the analog front 
end. This means, you will need TIAs and AGC at 5 Gbaud with a dynamic range 
of about 41-46 dB. This also looks extremely adventurous to propose in CMOS 
(and I would add, in any technology).

    On the other hand, using PAM-5 at 1.25 Gbaud, and 
    remembering that:

        20*log(18) = 25 dB

    we will need TIAs and AGCs at 1.25 Gbaud with a
    dynamic range of only 30-35 dB.

All the above place an interrogation mark on the technical viability of the 
serial PAM-5 approach at 5 Gbaud.

I doubt if the HSSG members were aware of these technicalities when they 
rushed to a strawpoll in Dallas, specially since you did not post your 
presentation in the web site before the Dallas meeting for a peer preview. 
This did not give the HSSG members a fair chance to take a critical look at 
your proposal.

Jaime

Jaime E. Kardontchik
Micro Linear
San Jose, CA 95131
email: kardontchik.jaime@xxxxxxxxxxx