Voltage Mode Driver for Low Power Transmission of High Speed Serial AER Links

This paper presents a voltage-mode high speed driver to transmit serial AER data in scalable multi-chip AER systems. To take advantage of the asynchronous nature of AER (Address Event Representation) streams, this implementation allows an energy efficient burst-mode operation. This is achieved by switching on/off the driver in data pauses to reduce static power consumption. Impedance matching is calibrated continuously to track temperature variations, obtaining an optimal performance without degrading the data rate. Power management techniques for switching drivers are discussed and an internally compensated high speed regulator is presented. The system has been designed in a 0.35μm CMOS technology to transmit data rates up to 500Mbps using Manchester enconding. Layout extracted simulation results are presented, which include all interconnect parasitics. Estimated peak rate is 15Meps for 32 bit events. Simulated power consumption of transmitter and receiver at peak rate is 33.2mW, while below 100 Keps is 1.3mW.