Next generation communication systems are reaching 110Gbps rates. At these frequencies, the skin effect and dielectric loss of copper cables cause inter-symbol interference (ISI) and frequency dependent loss, severely limiting the channel bandwidth. In this thesis, different methods for alleviating ISI are explored. The design of the critical blocks of an adaptive channel equalizer with up to two times oversampling are presented. The circuits were fabricated in a 0.13μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The linear, adaptive equalizer operates up to 70Gbps and its measured S-parameters exhibit a single-ended peak gain of 12.2dB at 52GHz, allowing for 31dB of peaking between DC and 52GHz. Equalization is demonstrated experimentally at 59Gbps for a cable loss of 17.9dB. These results make it the fastest receive equalizer published to date. A retiming flip-flop operating between 72 and 118 GHz, the highest reported in silicon, is also designed and characterized, showing less than 500-fs jitter.

Next generation communication systems are reaching 110Gbps rates. At these frequencies, the skin effect and dielectric loss of copper cables cause inter-symbol interference (ISI) and frequency dependent loss, severely limiting the channel bandwidth. In this thesis, different methods for alleviating ISI are explored. The design of the critical blocks of an adaptive channel equalizer with up to two times oversampling are presented. The circuits were fabricated in a 0.13μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The linear, adaptive equalizer operates up to 70Gbps and its measured S-parameters exhibit a single-ended peak gain of 12.2dB at 52GHz, allowing for 31dB of peaking between DC and 52GHz. Equalization is demonstrated experimentally at 59Gbps for a cable loss of 17.9dB. These results make it the fastest receive equalizer published to date. A retiming flip-flop operating between 72 and 118 GHz, the highest reported in silicon, is also designed and characterized, showing less than 500-fs jitter.