As circuit boards are increasingly required to transmit signals at higher and higher speeds, signal and power integrity become increasingly crucial. Rules of thumb that you have used over and over again to prevent signal loss no longer apply to these new, high-speed, high-density circuit designs. This leading-edge circuit design resource offers you the knowledge needed to quickly pinpoint transmission problems that can compromise your entire circuit design. Discussing both design and debug issues at gigabit per second data rates, the book serves as a practical reference for your projects involving high-speed serial signaling on printed wiring boards. Step-by-step, this book goes from reviewing the essentials of linear circuit theory, to examining practical issues of pulse propagation along lossless and lossy transmission lines. It provides detailed guidelines for crosstalk, attenuation, power supply decoupling, and layer stackup tradeoffs (including pad/antipad tradeoffs). Other key topics include the construction of etched conductors, analysis of return paths and split planes, microstrip and stripline characteristics, and SMT capacitors. Filled with on-the-job-proven examples, this hands-on reference is the book that you can turn to time and again to design out and troubleshoot circuit signal loss and impedance problems.
Characteristics and Construction of Printed Wiring Boards ë Unit System. PWB Construction. PWB Trace. Vias. Surface Finishes and Solder Mask.; Resistance of Etched Conductors ë Resistance at Low Frequencies. Loop Resistance and the Proximity Effect. Resistance Increase with Frequency: Skin Effect. Hand Calculations of Frequency Dependent Resistance. Resistance Increase due to Surface Roughness. ; Capacitance of Etched Conductors ë Capacitance and Charge. Parallel Plate Capacitor. Self and Mutual Capacitance. Capacitance Matrix. Dielectric Losses. Environmental Effects on Laminate and Loss Tangent.; Inductance of Etched Conductors ë Field Theory. Circuit Behavior of Inductance. Inductance Matrix. Mutual Inductance. Hand Calculations for Inductance.; Transmission Lines ë General Circuit Model of a Lossy Transmission Line. Impedance. Traveling Waves. ; Return Paths and Power Supply Decoupling ë Proper Return Paths. Stripline routed between Power and Ground Planes. Split Planes, Motes and Layer Changes. Connectors and Dense Pin Fields. Power Supply Bypass/Decoupling Capacitance. Connecting Decoupling Capacitors.; Serial Communication, Loss and Equalization - Harmonic Contents of a Data Stream. Line Codes. Bit Rate and Data Rate. Block Codes Used in Serial Transmission. Intersymbol Interference. Eye Diagrams. Equalization and Pre-Emphasis. DC Blocking Capacitors. ; Single-Ended and Differential Signaling and Crosstalk - Odd and Even Modes. Multi-Conductor Transmission Lines. Differential Signaling, Termination and Layout Rules. Crosstalk.; Characteristics of Printed Wiring Stripline and Microstrips - Stripline. Microstrip. Losses in Stripline and Microstrip. Microstrip and Stripline Differential Pairs.; Surface Mount Capacitors - Ceramic Surface Mount Capacitors. SMT Tantalum Capacitors. Replacing Tantalum with High-Valued Ceramic Capacitors.;
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Stephen C. Thierauf
is a signal integrity design engineer at Thierauf Design and Consulting. Previously he was a senior member of the technical staff at Digital Equipment Corporation and Compaq Computer Corporation, and senior consulting hardware engineer at Infiniswitch Corporation. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering Technology from Wentworth Institute of Technology.