Systems for high-speed backplane applications using FEC encoding

A receiver configured to recover data from a modulated data stream received over a channel disposed on a backplane, the receiver comprising:

• a data detector configured to detect symbols within the modulated data stream to provide a symbol stream;
• a line code decoder configured to demodulate the symbol stream to provide a demodulated data stream, wherein the symbol stream has been modulated in accordance with a pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) scheme having an order M, where M is an integer;
• a parallel-to-serial module configured to combine the demodulated data stream with one or more other demodulated data streams to provide a serial data stream;
• and
• a forward error correction (FEC) decoder configured to detect and correct for errors in the serial data stream using a redundant symbol to provide an error corrected data stream, wherein the redundant symbol was generated based on data from two or more of the demodulated data streams that comprise the serial data stream.

A transmitter configured to format an input data stream for transmission over a channel disposed on a backplane, the transmitter comprising:

• a forward error correction (FEC) encoder configured to generate and append redundant symbols to the input data stream to provide a FEC encoded data stream;
• a serial-to-parallel module configured to de-serialize the FEC encoded data stream and distribute the FEC encoded data stream over a plurality of parallel FEC encoded data streams, wherein at least one of the redundant symbols generated by the FEC encoder has been generated based on data sent over two or more of the plurality of parallel FEC encoded data streams;
• and
• a line code encoder configured to modulate one of the parallel FEC encoded data streams using a pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) scheme having four possible signal levels to provide a modulated data stream.