A 5 Gb/s Automatic Within-Pair Skew Compensator for Differential Data in 0.13 $\mu{\hbox {m}}$ CMOS

This paper presents an automatic within-pair skew compensator for high-speed differential data transmission. A wide-bandwidth data delay line is proposed to provide adjustable delay for data signals. Also presented is an on-chip within-pair skew detection circuit to detect skew between the differential data signals for automatic close-loop skew compensation. A within-pair skew compensator prototype for 5 Gb/s data was fabricated in 0.13 μm CMOS. Measurement results show that the within-pair skew compensator can automatically compensate for within-pair skew of ± 200 ps (± 1 unit interval). It consumes 20.4 mW from 1.2 V supply and occupies 0.015 mm² die area.