Low-jitter retimers resolve signal issues in video designs

Article By : Texas Instruments

The new retimers improve signal quality by removing jitter and compensating loss for signals transmitting over long traces and cables.

Three new high-performance retimers from Texas Instruments now allow an extended signal range over long traces, connectors and cables without degradation of signal integrity. These devices expand TI's retimer portfolio, and support flexible, cost-optimised system design, enabling designers to speed their products to market while maintaining optimal performance, according to the company.

The new retimers improve signal quality by removing jitter and compensating loss for signals transmitting over long traces and cables. The DP159 and TMDS181 retimers include adaptive equalization (EQ) up to 15dB, dynamically adjusting the EQ level to fine tune system performance and enable better jitter compensation.

__Figure 1:__ T*he retimers has up to 60 per cent lower power consumption than competitive devices and the widest temperature range from -40°C to 85°C.*

The devices support multi-gigabit signals, such as DisplayPort and HDMI, up to 6Gbps and operate at an extended temperature range, enabling designers to optimise performance in a wide variety of consumer, automotive and industrial equipment.

Various speed and protocol options, reprogrammable channel configuration, and scalable pin-to-pin compatibility for 1.4b and HDMI 2.0 devices enable engineers to design cost-optimised solutions with the lowest power consumption available in the market, up to 60 pe rcent lower than competitive devices.

The DPHY440 device is the industry's first 4-by-1-Gbps MIPI camera serial interface (CSI) and display serial interface (DSI) retimer, providing over 10 times higher bandwidth than existing solutions enabling higher resolution camera images over long traces and cables.

The DP159 and TMDS181 devices include robust features such as a pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) generator and real-time diagnostic EyeScan tools for in-system validation, which engineers can configure to quickly optimise their system design.

These new devices in TI's retimer portfolio are available with a variety of features, package types and pricing listed in the table below. Additionally, evaluation modules (EVMs) are available to help engineers quickly and easily evaluate performance and speed time to market.

__Figure 2:__ *Pricing and availability*