A serial link bit error rate (BER) performance is a function of the transmitter, transmission media, and receiver. The transmission media of the channel is bandwidth-limited and the signal traveling through is subjected to attenuation and distortion.
The GTM receiver in Versal ACAPs is an ADC-based buffer that breaks the equalizer into two domains, analog and digital. The incoming signal first passes through the analog stage consisting of a CTLE and AGC stage. The signal is then digitized by the ADC and passes through the feed-forward equalizer (FFE) and decision feedback equalizer (DFE) before being sampled by the CDR.
The combination of the CTLE, FFE, and DFE can compensate for both the pre-cursor and post-cursor of the transmitted symbol. All equalization loops are auto adaptive to handle a wide range of channel profiles and to compensate for any PVT variations.