Sueun Lee, a PhD student in POSTECH Electrical Engineering (advisor: Professor Byungsub Kim), received the 2019 POSTECH–Samsung Electronics Outstanding Industry–University Collaboration Paper Award and KRW 2.5 million for “A 7.8Gb/s/pin 1.96pJ/b Compact Single-Ended TRX and CDR with Phase-Difference Modulation for Highly Reflective Memory Interfaces,” presented at ISSCC 2018.

The paper proposed a phase-difference modulation (PDM) transceiver for efficient communication over highly reflective channels. Compared with conventional non-return-to-zero communication, PDM reduces reflective intersymbol interference, enabling communication over highly reflective multidrop channels without separate equalization.

For more reliable transceiver and clock/data recovery operation, a phase-difference amplifier (PDA) relaxed tight transmitter timing requirements. It also enables simple clock recovery by interpolating received PDM signals.

The implemented transceiver overcame ten in-band notches without a separate decision-feedback equalizer and achieved up to 7.8 Gb/s/pin, improving transmitter power consumption and hardware area by factors of 5.1 and 5.8, respectively.