Zachariah Peterson

Textbook chapter on signal integrity analysis as applied to RF and microwave systems. Accepted for publication in 2022 after revisions.

Published in 2023 Interference Technology Engineer’s Master, 52nd Edition

Published in 2023 Interference Technology Engineer’s Master, 52nd Edition

Most PCB designers don’t realize they have a power integrity problem until that problem causes a board to fail. Power integrity is also related to two other important areas that repeatedly cause design failures: signal integrity and EMI/EMC. In fact, some common signal integrity problems are related to power integrity in that unstable power leads to signal level and timing fluctuations. In addition, some EMI problems can be caused by excessive emissions by fast transients within a power… Show more

Most PCB designers don’t realize they have a power integrity problem until that problem causes a board to fail. Power integrity is also related to two other important areas that repeatedly cause design failures: signal integrity and EMI/EMC. In fact, some common signal integrity problems are related to power integrity in that unstable power leads to signal level and timing fluctuations. In addition, some EMI problems can be caused by excessive emissions by fast transients within a power system.

To help PCB designers and systems engineers better overcome their power integrity problems, it’s important first to know how power integrity can cause other problems in a circuit board. This article will give an overview of the power integrity problems more designers are experiencing in modern electronics systems and which will become more prevalent as devices reach greater feature density in the near future. Show less

Many systems are integrating capabilities that require mmWave beamforming. Example application areas include suites of sensors, 5G/6G systems, radar, and SATCOM. In this presentation, a review of best design practices surrounding interconnect design required to route signals into phased array structures required in these application areas will be presented. The core of this presentation will examine the process and theory required to design transmission lines and antenna arrays for these… Show more

Many systems are integrating capabilities that require mmWave beamforming. Example application areas include suites of sensors, 5G/6G systems, radar, and SATCOM. In this presentation, a review of best design practices surrounding interconnect design required to route signals into phased array structures required in these application areas will be presented. The core of this presentation will examine the process and theory required to design transmission lines and antenna arrays for these systems. In addition to transmission lines for these systems, the placement and arrangement of antennas in the array, as well as oscillator and transceiver elements, will determine the beamforming capabilities of these systems. Examples from industry and research literature will be presented to illustrate practical usage of these concepts and the diversity of systems to which they apply. Show less

This article examines the current landscape for automated electromagnetic field solver utilities built into PCB design software, or available as 3rd party applications and extensions.

As many design teams may have experienced, high-speed designs are confronted with many of the signaling and layout challenges seen in high-frequency designs. High-speed interconnect design should take a similar approach seen in high-frequency design with respect to losses, impedance determination, and analysis.

In this technical session, I'll explore some of the correspondences between high-speed PCB design and analysis as they relate to the fundamental concepts in high-frequency… Show more

As many design teams may have experienced, high-speed designs are confronted with many of the signaling and layout challenges seen in high-frequency designs. High-speed interconnect design should take a similar approach seen in high-frequency design with respect to losses, impedance determination, and analysis.

In this technical session, I'll explore some of the correspondences between high-speed PCB design and analysis as they relate to the fundamental concepts in high-frequency design. Topics like interconnect design, measurement, and analysis will be examined while comparing the design approaches in high-speed and high-frequency PCB layout and routing. The goal is to help high-speed design teams become more familiar with the conceptual explanations for why very high-speed signal integrity problems occur and how they can be overcome with some smart design and layout decisions. Show less

This presentation outlines the current state of PCB design optimization techniques used to produce useful designs, while balancing multiple design goals. An alternative method for design optimization from analytical equations describing transmission lines will be presented. Some practical examples for striplines, microstrips, and mode-selective waveguides will be presented. These models are fully causal and account for dispersion, dielectric losses, skin effect losses, and copper roughness in a… Show more

This presentation outlines the current state of PCB design optimization techniques used to produce useful designs, while balancing multiple design goals. An alternative method for design optimization from analytical equations describing transmission lines will be presented. Some practical examples for striplines, microstrips, and mode-selective waveguides will be presented. These models are fully causal and account for dispersion, dielectric losses, skin effect losses, and copper roughness in a real PCB. The presented method is applicable to any transmission line with a known analytical or numerical model, and the method uses standard evolutionary computation techniques to optimize the design. Similar techniques can be implemented in advanced field-solver tools, but designers with basic coding skills can use some simple open-source packages to build their own design optimization routines for transmission lines. Furthermore, the transmission line design optimization method presented here can be used to balance multiple design objectives, which is not currently possible in PCB CAD packages. Show less

Discover how a single software capability can help transform the MCAD-ECAD collaboration process.

What you’ll learn:
- How to reduce errors and unify MCAD and ECAD teams working together on the same design.
- How to design with high precision and enable MCAD and ECAD teams to work in their respective design environments.
- How to help mechanical engineers perform detailed mechanical checks, finite element analysis, and modify placement to ensure mechanical constraints are… Show more

Discover how a single software capability can help transform the MCAD-ECAD collaboration process.

What you’ll learn:
- How to reduce errors and unify MCAD and ECAD teams working together on the same design.
- How to design with high precision and enable MCAD and ECAD teams to work in their respective design environments.
- How to help mechanical engineers perform detailed mechanical checks, finite element analysis, and modify placement to ensure mechanical constraints are satisfied. Show less

PCB optimization focuses on designing boards to meet specific performance metrics while satisfying specific design constraints. In particular, interconnect design requires satisfying multiple design objectives and constraints that may be in conflict, and engineers need tools and methods to help them balance design these objectives while staying within their design constraints. For ultra-high-speed boards, designers need to optimize transmission line designs within the relevant signal bandwidth,… Show more

PCB optimization focuses on designing boards to meet specific performance metrics while satisfying specific design constraints. In particular, interconnect design requires satisfying multiple design objectives and constraints that may be in conflict, and engineers need tools and methods to help them balance design these objectives while staying within their design constraints. For ultra-high-speed boards, designers need to optimize transmission line designs within the relevant signal bandwidth, which can extend to hundreds of GHz. Newer signaling specifications and standards (e.g., USB4, DDR5, and IEEE 802.3 standards) require this type of optimization. In this presentation, the use of model extraction, design exploration, and fusion of analytical/numerical models will be presented with the goal of developing models for broadband design optimization. For PCB transmission lines, a model that accounts for copper roughness and dispersion with numerical or analytical impedance models will be presented. These concepts fit within recent research on novel CAD and field solver methodologies to address high speed/high frequency interconnect design challenges. Show less

Random lasers are unique systems where lasing occurs via repetitive scattering in a disordered nanostructure with gain. Theoretical descriptions that can provide a framework for understanding temporal instabilities leading to high-intensity emission is lacking in the literature and requires a time-dependent theory that accounts for stability conditions. Herein, instability conditions for multimodal lasing will be derived from self-consistent time-dependent laser theory. An equation of motion… Show more

Random lasers are unique systems where lasing occurs via repetitive scattering in a disordered nanostructure with gain. Theoretical descriptions that can provide a framework for understanding temporal instabilities leading to high-intensity emission is lacking in the literature and requires a time-dependent theory that accounts for stability conditions. Herein, instability conditions for multimodal lasing will be derived from self-consistent time-dependent laser theory. An equation of motion describing relaxation oscillations in a CW random laser in the single-mode and multimode cases will be presented. Stability and equations of motion describing multimodal stability will be presented. Conditions leading to unstable behavior, as well as spatially-confined mixed instabilities and relaxation oscillations in multimode random lasing with spatial overlap will be discussed. These results apply to semi-ordered and totally random semiconducting lasers and can be generalized to other materials. Show less

Radar modules used in new automobiles have seen many advances at the chip level, board level, and signal processing level. Newer modules face multiple challenges related to increasing point cloud density, prevent on-module and inter-module interference, and coexistence with other wireless protocols, particularly as 5G rollouts get pushed into higher frequencies. This presentation will review recent advances in automotive radar design with an eye towards EMI suppression, as well as advances in… Show more

Radar modules used in new automobiles have seen many advances at the chip level, board level, and signal processing level. Newer modules face multiple challenges related to increasing point cloud density, prevent on-module and inter-module interference, and coexistence with other wireless protocols, particularly as 5G rollouts get pushed into higher frequencies. This presentation will review recent advances in automotive radar design with an eye towards EMI suppression, as well as advances in other design aspects that have helped increase accuracy in these systems. Finally, some newer design paradigms will be presented with an eye towards EMI suppression in car radar modules. Show less

Paper presented at IEEE 2020 Conference on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging and Systems (EPEPS)

PCB transmission lines are designed with broadband impedance matching using differential evolution while including causal dispersion and roughness. Results for striplines show that an optimized geometry can be found with differential evolution.

Whether a ground plane should be included between the PHY layer and an RJ45 connector in MII/RMII routing is a source of contention among PCB designers. A summary of different design strategies published in application notes and their effect on signal integrity is reviewed in this article. Some design recommendations are provided to ensure signal integrity when designing systems with Ethernet.

The dream in the automotive industry is fully autonomous driving, even in poor weather conditions. This requires synchronization of multiple sensor systems, as well as real-time processing of data from these systems. Current radar systems operating at ~24 GHz (K-band) are prevalent in new vehicles with ADAS systems, and there will be an inevitable shift to state-of-the-art 76-81 GHz radar systems to support autonomous vehicles. These systems already present EMC challenges that must be addressed… Show more

The dream in the automotive industry is fully autonomous driving, even in poor weather conditions. This requires synchronization of multiple sensor systems, as well as real-time processing of data from these systems. Current radar systems operating at ~24 GHz (K-band) are prevalent in new vehicles with ADAS systems, and there will be an inevitable shift to state-of-the-art 76-81 GHz radar systems to support autonomous vehicles. These systems already present EMC challenges that must be addressed at the board level, intra and inter-vehicle levels, and signal processing level. Given the EMC and EMI challenges that arise within a single radar module, between radar modules, and between multiple vehicles, how can systems designers ensure multiple nearby vehicles can be sufficiently resolved by an autonomous vehicle? Here, we’ll take a look at the current EMC challenges that arise in vehicles with FMCW radar systems and some future directions systems and board designers can take to overcome these challenges. Show less

Random lasers are unique optical systems where lasing occurs due to repetitive scattering in a disordered nanostructure with gain. Herein, self-consistent time-dependent random laser theory will be used to derive criteria leading to unstable, irreproducible emission from random lasers.

Vol. 124, 063104

Volume 48, Issue 4

Volume 7, No. 2