Asymptotic thermal analysis of electronic packages and printed-circuit board

Electrical analogy to thermal networks is widely used to study thermal behavior of electronic components. For solution of Poison heat equation, this analogy usually leads to a large resistance-capacitance (RC) network. Conventional simulation techniques when applied to these networks require substantial computational resources. This paper presents new solution technique based on a recently developed Asymptotic Waveform Evaluation (AWE) concept which has been successfully used for simulation of large electrical networks. Applying AWE to thermal analysis of printed circuit boards results in two orders of magnitude speed-up with respect to current iterative techniques with comparable accuracy.