Reduced-sized voltage-mode driver for high-speed I/O utilizing dynamic current-driven bulk biasing

In this paper, a modified structure for low-swing voltage-mode drivers in high-speed serial links is proposed. A dynamic current-driven bulk-biasing technique is applied to the driver transistors to achieve proper channel impedance termination and to minimize the transistors´ sizes. Simulation results of an 8-Gb/s serial link in all process corners of a 0.13-μm CMOS technology confirm that, by using the proposed dynamic current-driven bulk-biasing technique, the total size of the driver transistors is reduced by 23%. Moreover, the power overhead of the proposed technique is only less than 0.02% of the total power consumption of the driver.