The EMI benefits of ground plane stitching in multi-layer power bus stacks

The effect on EMI of stitching multiple ground planes together along the periphery of multi-layer PCB stacks is studied. Power bus noise induced EMI and radiation from the board edges is the major concern herein. The EMI at 3 meters for different via stitch spacing and layer thickness is modeled with FDTD modeling. It is shown that the ground plane stitching effectively reduces the radiated EMI that results from fringing fields at the power bus edges. Two families of curves are generated to demonstrate the variation of the radiated EMI as a function of layer thickness and stitch spacing. Further studies show that the reduction of the EMI from ground plane stitching may be compromised by other radiation mechanisms.