Course Description

Signal Integrity (SI) is becoming an essential skill for many hardware engineers.

Who Should Attend?

This seminar is provided to support those involved in all areas of Hardware design.  Anyone who needs a basic understanding of these SI concepts will benefit from this seminar.    In addition to those directly working with SI, hardware design engineers and managers will find that this seminar provides a good base on these important topics. 

Benefits of Attending

Those attending will leave with a clear understanding of fundamentals of signal transmission and the practical implementation in real products.  This will allow hardware and SI engineers to work together more closely, and provide a solid basis for a deeper study of the issues.

Outline

Introduction to Signal Integrity

What is Signal integrity and why do I care?  The first presentation will explain the need for good SI, the basic physics that limit SI and the terms used; including loss, jitter, and the eye pattern.

Transmission Line Theory

A clear explanation of the basics of transmission line theory will be presented.  This will include the effects of discontinuities and terminations and then expanded to include losses and other frequency dependent phenomena.

Time and Frequency Domain considerations

SI work is primarily developed utilizing time domain analysis there is much that can be understood more clearly by also considering the frequency domain.  This section provide the attendee with the ability to relate to the frequency domain

The realities of Inductance

Inductance is one of the most misunderstood concepts in electronic PCB design.  At high data rates, inductance dominates the high frequency harmonics and will have a significant effect on signal quality.  This section will discuss the concepts of self inductance, loop inductance and partial inductance, and how these concepts relate to PCB design.

The return current path

The term ‘ground’ is very confusing and misleading.  From a high speed data point of view, the traditional ‘ground’ has little impact.  The important concept is the return current path and any interruptions in that return current path.  Traditional SI tools do not include these effects.  This section will focus on understanding the true return current path, and the effects of various types of return path interruptions. 

Differential vs. truly balanced signals

High speed signals are labeled as ‘differential’ but are nearly always not perfectly balanced.  This section will discuss the effect of in-pair skew, rise/fall time mismatch, and mode conversions between differential mode and common mode.

Filtering Analysis

High speed signal filtering is an important part of the typical EMI/EMC design.  The proper design of the filter does not require complex mathematics, but rather a simple impedance analysis of the filter components.  This section will present the design techniques for filter design.

Manufacturing considerations

Etching traces into boards is not a perfect science and the tolerances of trace width and shape combined with variations the substrate used must be considered.  These effects will be explained so that the attendee is ready to address these very practical considerations.

Cross Talk

Unwanted coupling of similar signals or cross talk must be controlled to ensure good SI.  The means of coupling and its effects will be examined together with means of mitigation.

Jitter and Bit Error Rate

Data patterns bandwidth and dispersive transmission paths result in signal jitter and an associated increase in error rates.  Understanding the causes of these degradations permit the designer to address them and ensure the signal transmission has good integrity to the maximum data rate required.

Encoding and other options

While not specifically covered software and encoding are important tools in the SI engineer’s tool box and provide a means of extending the physical layer that is being presented in this seminar.  A very brief overview of these techniques will be provided to ensure attendees have a full range of options available to them.

time and frequency domain analysis (I will  introduce this topic earlier for transmission line effects)

distance from IC to cap

connection inductance (vias etc...how to calculate)

global vs individual cap placement

decoupling myths (like multi-value caps for wide freq coverage)

Intro to SI

Intended signaling paths

       — transmission line theory

       — characteristic Z

       — termination effects (mismatching effects)

       — time domain and frequency domain

Imperfect and ill defined signaling paths

       — coves a basic intro to inductance

       — return current path

       — skin depth effects

       — psudeo-differential signals and common mode signals vs skew etc

       — filtering analysis (very simple using current node analysis)

cross-talk

       — near end vs far end

       — cross-talk within bus groups

       — cross-talk from high speed nets to low speed nets

       — how to reduce cross-talk

Return Coupling and plane decoupling

      — time and frequency domain analysis

       — distance from IC to cap

       — connection inductance (vias etc...how to calculate)

       — global vs individual cap placement

       — decoupling myths (like multi-value caps for wide freq coverage)

Speakers’ Bios:

Dr. Bruce Archambeault is an IBM Distinguished Engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, NC.  He received his B.S.E.E degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1977 and his M.S.E.E degree from Northeastern University in 1981.  He received his Ph. D. from the University of New Hampshire in 1997.  His doctoral research was in the area of computational electromagnetics applied to real-world EMC problems. 

In 1981 he joined Digital Equipment Corporation and through 1994 he had assignments ranging from EMC/TEMPEST product design and testing to developing computational electromagnetic EMC-related software tools.  In 1994 he joined SETH Corporation where he continued to develop computational electromagnetic EMC-related software tools and used them as a consulting engineer in a variety of different industries.  In 1997 he joined IBM in Raleigh, N.C. where he is the lead EMC engineer, responsible for EMC tool development and use on a variety of products.  During his career in the U.S. Air Force he was responsible for in-house  communications security and TEMPEST/EMC related research and development projects.

Dr. Archambeault has authored or co-authored a number of papers in computational electromagnetics, mostly applied to real-world EMC applications.  He is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the  IEEE EMC Society and a past Board of Directors member for the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES).  He has served as a past IEEE/EMCS Distinguished Lecturer and Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility.  He is the author of the book “PCB Design for Real-World EMI Control” and the lead author of the book titled “EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook”.

Colin Brench has been working for Hewlett-Packard (formerly with Compaq and Digital Equipment Corp.) for 21 years, where he is currently a Principal Member of the Technical Staff.  His responsibilities include EMC product design and the development of EMC modeling capabilities for the High Performance Server Laboratory.

Colin has been particularly active in the area of antenna and shielding behavior since the early 1970’s. He has authored over 20 technical papers and articles and holds ten patents for various methods of EMI control; others are pending. Colin is a co-author of the book, EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook (Kluwer Academic, 2nd Edition 2001) and, in 2002 Colin received the IEEE EMC Society Certificate of Technical Achievement for his contributions to the development of EMC models directed to understanding EMI shielding and antenna behavior.

Colin has presented numerous EMC training classes that embrace a broad range of topics ranging from microprocessor packaging, through printed circuit module issues, to system design and shielding. In many of these classes, explanations are clarified with a combination of simulations and data from measurements. He is a NARTE certified EMC Engineer, a member of the dB Society, a member of the IEEE EMC Society, and is serving his first term on the society’s board of directors.  He is vice chairman of the IEEE EMCS standards development committee and active in the TC-9 and ANSI ASC63 committees. Colin also served a term as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE EMC Society in 2001 and 2002.

Decision/Cancel Date for this course is Friday, April 6, 2007

Course Fee Schedule:

On-line Registration and Payment

On-line registration is closed for this course, but registration is still available on-site between 8:30AM-9:00AM April 17, 2007 at the Holiday Inn Select, 15 Middlesex Canal Park, Woburn

Copyright © 2008 IEEE Boston Section. All rights reserved.
Maintained by R M Stelting

Updated Thursday August 16, 2007