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4.2.1. Analog vs. Digital Receiver
Transition times of the PAM4 data signal can create significant horizontal eye closure due to the transition noise, which is dependent on the rise and fall times of the signal. Transition-qualified phase detectors are needed to look at analog levels for clock recovery.
Legacy NRZ analog receiver design can be leveraged. However, direct detection (comparators for four amplitude levels) requires a lot of power. For multilevel transmission, PAM4, digital receivers prove to be more flexible and provide powerful signal processing techniques. This can be expensive because of the added architectural complexities.