Power Delivery Network Design And Power Integrity Analysis For High-Speed Circuits

With the trend of the electronic systems toward higher edge rates, higher density, higher power, lower supply voltages, larger transient currents, the focus of the analysis and design of high-speed digital systems have shifted to the power integrity from signal integrity. Supplying a clear power to the IC and managing the coupling of power noise have become the bottleneck of high-speed digital circuit designs, which is the subject of the dissertation.The power delivery networks constitute the largest and most complicated interconnects of the modern digital systems, they account for about 30 % to 40% of the overall interconnect space and area. Thousands of components on the PCB or package, both active and passive, are all connected into the power delivery network directly or indirectly. Therefore, compared with the signal integrity, the performance analysis and the architecture design of the power delivery networks are immature and controversial, especially for the decoupling networks, which is the source of debate by academia for decades. However, the design of the power delivery network is the most important part of the high-speed digital system design. It closely relates to power integrity, signal integrity and electromagnetic integrity of the whole electronic system. This dissertation emphasizes on the design and analysis of the power delivery networks for high-speed digital systems. Another two important related topics investigated here are the suppression of power noise and the modeling and analysis of non-ideal high-speed interconnects. The contents of dissertation are mainly listed as follows:1) The research results available in this field are summarized and abstracted, many key points of the power delivery network design are discussed. The intrinsic relationships between the power integrity, signal integrity and electromagnetic integrity are demonstrated. Based on this, the concept of power integrity, signal integrity and electromagnetic integrity co-design is proposed.2) A new concept called multi-input impedance is proposed. Then the global and local characteristics of the power delivery networks are analyzed and demonstrated. The reason why is difficult to design a reliable power delivery network using the self impedance is uncovered. A power-delivery-network design and analysis method is developed based on the multi-input impedance concept. This method overcomes the shortcoming of the target impedance design method which can not characterize the power delivery network in high frequencies.3) The dynamic charge exchange and transmission among all components in the power delivery network are demonstrated. Based on this, a new method for the characterization of the capacitors and inductors in the view of power delivery is proposed, which can accurately characterizes the time-limited behavior of the capacitors and inductors responding to the surge currents. A new power-delivery-based design method for the power delivery networks is developed. This method is convenient, intuitive, and reliable. It provides a new version for the power-delivery-network design and analysis.4) The application of electromagnetic bandgap structures in the power noise suppression is also investigated. The noise suppression mechanism of the electromagnetic bandgap structure is analyzed and its limitations on practical applications are discussed. A new power noise suppression concept of electromagnetic-bandgap-structure isolation wall is introduced. This idea could be used to not only extremely extend the noise suppression bandwidth, but also greatly reduce the additional cost and the negative effects by the introduction of an electromagnetic bandgap surface into a power/ground pair. In addition, the signal integrity of the signal traces between a power/ground plane pair with electromagnetic bandgap structure is also investigated, which pave a straight way for the real applications of the electromagnetic bandgap structure in the power noise suppression.5) The modeling and analysis of high-speed non-ideal interconnects are investigated. The non-ideal interconnects are the key networks in the high-speed digital systems, which greatly affect the power integrity, signal integrity and electromagnetic integrity of the entire system. The fundamental of the modeling is demonstrated using the performance regions of the transmission line. Two typical non-ideal high-speed interconnects, high-speed and high-density connectors and via transitions, are investigated. The highlight of the modeling methods is the essential embodiment of the relationship between the electrical behavior and the physical structures of the modeled interconnects. It can be easily understood, analyzed and designed.All relative facets of the power delivery network's analysis and design are studied systematically in this dissertation, and all results are validated by strict simulations and experiments. Hence, the results here can be used in practical designs directly.