PAM-4/6/8 Performance and Power Analysis for Next Generation 224Gbit/s Links

Next-generation data centers demand higher bandwidth, generating interest in 224 Gbit/s wireline transceivers. This paper analyzes the performance of PAM-4/PAM-6/PAM-8 for a co-packaged optical link including different channel lengths at 224 Gbit/s with all transceiver blocks, DSP equalization, and NEXT/FEXT crosstalk. With a 32-tap FFE and 1-tap MLSE equalization, a SER < 10
⁻³
is achievable for PAM-4/PAM-6 for a channel attenuation <13dB at 56 GHz. Furthermore, a detailed power analysis is done for the modulations including all relevant transceiver blocks.