Transient Analysis of Lossy Transmission Lines: an Efficient Approach Based on the Method of Characteristics

This paper is devoted to transient analysis of lossy transmission lines characterized by frequency-dependent parameters. A public dataset of parameters for three line examples (a module, a board, and a cable) is used, and a new example of on-chip interconnect is introduced. This dataset provides a well established and realistic benchmark for accuracy and timing analysis of interconnect analysis tools. Particular attention is devoted to the intrinsic consistency and causality of these parameters. Several implementations based on generalizations of the well-known method-of-characteristics are presented. The key feature of such techniques is the extraction of the line modal delays. Therefore, the method is highly optimized for long interconnects characterized by significant propagation delay. Nonetheless, the method is also successfully applied here to a short high/loss on-chip line, for which other approaches based on lumped matrix rational approximations can also be used with high efficiency. This paper shows that the efficiency of delay extraction techniques is strongly dependent on the particular circuit implementation and several practical issues including generation of rational approximations and time step control are discussed in detail

A comparative study of two time-domain simulation algorithms for lossy and dispersive transmission lines

Two general discrete time-domain transient analysis algorithms for the modeling of lossy and dispersive transmission lines are reviewed and compared. The first is based on the generalized method of characteristics through recursive convolution while the second is based on the more recent Padé macromodeling approach using synthesized lumped networks The different approximations made in these two algorithms are compared and computational evidence is presented to show that these two methods complement rather than compete with each other

A comparative study of two transient analysis algorithms flor lossy transmission lines with frequency-dependent data

Two general algorithms for the modeling of lossy transmission lines with frequency-dependent parameters are contrasted and compared. The first is based on the generalized method of characteristics while the second is based on a more recent Padé macromodeling approach. The different approximations made in these two algorithms are contrasted and computational evidence is presented to show that these two methods complement each other in their properties