Simulink-Based Modeling and PCA-Based Nonlinearity Evaluation for High-Speed Links

With the data rate of high-speed links increasing, the impact of nonlinear factors becomes more and more prominent that bring great signal integrity challenges to the analysis and design of high-speed links. However, there are two gaps in the study of the nonlinear behaviors of the high-speed links. One is that there is no simulation platform that can flexibly deal with different kinds of nonlinear behaviors. The other is that there is no metric that can quantify the level of the nonlinearity of the links. Aiming at these two problems, this article first models a nonlinear high-speed link based on Simulink, which can flexibly adjust the nonlinear behaviors, and then analyze the impact of nonlinear behaviors on the performance of high-speed links. Lastly, a metric is presented based on the principal component analysis to quantify the level of the nonlinearity of the high-speed links. Simulation results show that the metric can effectively capture the nonlinear severity of the links.