Multi-level Signaling for Chip-to-Chip and Backplane Communication (A Tutorial)

The signal attenuation in chip-to-chip and backplane communication increases with the data rate. Depending on the channel’s frequency response, this attenuation may be mitigated if multi-level signaling is employed instead of binary signaling. This paper reviews the basics of binary signaling and how multi-level signaling could help improve the signal quality.