Absorbing Termination for High-Frequency Measurements of Interconnects

In this paper, a novel termination (“match”) scheme is introduced with absorbing material for high-frequency measurements. Through the absorption of electromagnetic waves, absorbing material makes an equivalent absorbing boundary condition at the interface, which creates an equivalent termination condition. The absorbing termination can be used to facilitate on-demand match condition in high-frequency measurements. The proposed technique is particularly useful when resistive termination is difficult to implement or too expensive to apply. For example, the soldering process (soldering-on soldering-off) is time-consuming, hard to control on the precise soldering position, and easy to break the printed circuit board soldering pads. It is useful for various applications, including via crosstalk measurements in socket, package breakout via array, or other dense/fine structures. The absorbing termination method provides an innovative termination solution for RF/microwave measurements.