The group at EIL has been working on the design and characterization of the drivers and receivers that will be integrated in the ARCADIA demonstrator (a CMOS sensor including 512×512 cells), one TX/RX pair per macro-column. The transmitter and receiver have been designed in a 110 nm CMOS technology with a supply voltage of 1.2V, a common mode of 450mV and adjustable output swing supporting a data rate up to 2 Gbit s-1 has been presented. The transmitter implements a 3-bit current switching DAC used to adjust the current flowing in the termination resistor, hence the output swing, from 250 µA to 2mA. In the same 110 nm CMOS technology, a programmable bandgap reference has also been designed and included in the demonstrator chip.
