Effects of High-Speed Signals on Power Integrity

As the data rate of high-speed digital transmission increases, the need for high-quality power distribution within the system will continue unabated. Space constraints can sometimes dictate that both power and high-speed signals must be run together within a high-speed connector. This raises the concern that the high-speed signals could impose noise on the power pins, and that this noise could propagate onto power and ground planes and cause instability within the power distribution network (PDN). This paper uses full-wave 3-D electromagnetic modeling and circuit simulation to compute the noise transferred onto ground pins. It uses that noise as the excitation source in a subsequent full-wave analysis of a ground plane and by plotting the current density, observes the possible disruption to the PDN.