Tim Pattyn wins the Best Student Paper Award at the 28th IEEE Workshop on Signal and Power Integrity (SPI 2024)

Congrats to Tim Pattyn for winning the Best Student Paper Award at the 28th IEEE Workshop on Signal and Power Integrity (SPI 2024)!

About SPI 2024

Standing for almost three decades, the IEEE Workshop on Signal and Power Integrity (SPI) has evolved into a noteworthy forum of exchange on all aspects of Signal and Power Integrity, comprising the latest research and developments on design, characterization, modeling, simulation and testing at chip, package, board, and system level. The workshop brings together developers and researchers from academia and industry in order to encourage cooperation.

The 28th Edition was held as an in-person event on May 12-15, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal. The technical program included both oral and poster sessions, and several prominent experts have given keynotes and tutorials on areas of emerging interest.

About the paper topic

In high-speed differential interconnects on printed circuit boards, signal integrity (SI) issues arise when neglecting the inherent low-pass characteristic and ubiquitous presence of common-mode noise. This work proposes a novel open-circuited stub equalizer with integrated common-mode filter in order to compensate for the low-pass characteristic while simultaneously suppressing the transmission of unwanted common-mode noise to the receiver. A theoretical analysis of the open-circuited stub equalizer is conducted, and suitable approximations are derived to facilitate equalizer synthesis. Experimental validation is provided by a test structure consisting of a 20 cm microstrip serpentine delay line for which a 4 GHz equalizer is designed. Frequency-domain measurements show a 1-dB bandwidth up to 3.97 GHz with a passband ripple of 0.38 dB for the differential mode and a significant reduction in transmission for the common mode. The resulting SI enhancement increases the possible data rate from 6 Gbps to 20 Gbps using a PAM-4 (pulse amplitude modulation 4-level) modulation scheme.