Transient Analysis of Printed Circuit Board Layouts using a Time Domain Solution of Kirchoff's Network Equations

With the clock speeds and data rates greater than 1GHz being used on digital Printed Circuit Boards, it is now essential that the electromagnetic effects of crosstalk, reflection and pulse distortion be taken into account in the design. Unfortunately the size and complexity of a typical PCB is so great that a full-wave electromagnetic analysis is not practicable and a more pragmatic approach, such as the derivation of equivalent passive electrical circuits to represent the actual structure, must be considered. In this contribution a novel time domain technique is presented for analysing such equivalent circuits in a computationally efficient and accurate manner. Results are presented for example structures showing the computational speed and accuracy achieved.