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This paper presents an overview of proximity wireless communication (PWC) technologies, their principles, design guidelines and practical applications. In particular, two different applications of PWC are reviewed. One is PWC between stacked chips. Both communication distance and coupler size are several tens of microns. Area and energy efficient design techniques are introduced. Another is PWC between module boards. Both communication distance and coupler size are several millimeters. Energy and area efficient practical designs are introduced for mobile and industrial machinery applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 280 Mb/s non-contact in-vehicle LAN system using electromagnetic clip connectors is presented. The bidirectional transmission line coupler based electromagnetic clip connector, which can be used to make local area network connections similar to clips, suppresses the signal reflections on the bus enabling 280 Mb/s data rate which is 7 times faster than the state-of-the-art in-vehicle LAN transceiver. Since all modules are connected with the shortest distance, this connection system can reduce wire harness weight by 30%. Forward error correction is done by $N$-x Manchester encoding on the transmitter side and majority voting on the receiver side. High noise immunity is achieved through synchronous receiving by the digital clock recovery circuit which is robust against noise. Communication tests were conducted at 280 Mb/s with 10 transceivers fabricated in 65 nm CMOS technology connected by a 10 m unshielded twisted pair cable. Evaluation of the bit error rate and radiation spectrum confirmed that the ISO specifications concerning electromagnetic susceptibility and the CISPR ones concerning electromagnetic interference are satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An 8.5-Gb/s/link non-contact multi-drop bus is presented. The signal reflections that limit the data rates of conventional multi-drop bus interfaces are dramatically reduced by using transmission line couplers at each signal branching point. As an energy-equipartitioned technique provides the same signal level to every port, wider receiver margin is achieved. The data rate is improved by 1.8 times compared to the most advanced multi-drop bus interface. The theoretical analysis and design techniques of energy-equipartitioned transmission line couplers are discussed in this paper. The design methodologies were verified through simulations performed by using a full-3D EM-simulator and experiments with FR4 test boards. Due to the low-cut characteristics of the couplers, the low-frequency components are cut off so that differentiated pulses arrive at the receiver input point. A receiver detects and recovers the received pulses by integrating them using hysteresis characteristics. The design techniques of the transceiver for the transmission line couplers are also discussed in this paper. The proposed methods were verified by using a test chip fabricated with a 90-nm CMOS process. Experiments with a prototype of an eight-drop multi-drop bus system confirmed BER < 10^-14 at a data rate of 8.5-Gb/s/link. The measured timing margin at the far-end module was 0.49-UI at a BER of 10^-12. The power consumption of the transceiver was 75.6-mW at a supply voltage of 1.2-V. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]