Analog decoders and receivers for high speed applications

The ever increasing speed of data transmission, especially in optical channels, in magnetic recording devices and in wireless links, makes it necessary to look at new receiver structures which are capable of high speed processing at low power consumption. Analog, nonlinear and highly parallel operating circuits can perform the tasks of equalization, differential detection, channel decoding and, in some cases, of source decoding which are normally assigned to digital processors and circuits. The first prototype analog VLSI chips of simple decoder components are available and perform well at speeds up to 10 Gbit/s.