Experimental evaluation of NRZ and duobinary up to 48 Gbit/s for electrical backplanes

Transmission beyond 40 Gbit/s across a commercial Megtron 6, 11.5-inch electrical backplane is explored, and a record error-free serial electrical duobinary transmission of up to 48 Gbit/s including backplane connectors is demonstrated. Compared with non-return-to-zero (NRZ), the equalised duobinary transmission over the backplane demonstrates improved performance due to its higher bandwidth efficiency, and opens possibilities to increase the serial speed of backplane channels. Bit error rates are presented at different data rates and over different backplane channel lengths.