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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 15, NO. 3, MARCH 2005

A Novel Power Plane With Super-Wideband Elimination of Ground Bounce Noise on High Speed Circuits
Tzong-Lin Wu, Senior Member, IEEE, Chien-Chung Wang, Yen-Hui Lin, Ting-Kuang Wang, and George Chang
AbstractA novel L-bridged electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) power/ground planes is proposed with super-wideband suppression of the ground bounce noise (GBN) from 600 Mz to 4.6 GHz. The L-shaped bridge design on the EBG power plane not only broadens the stopband bandwidth, but also can increase the mutual coupling between the adjacent EBG cells by signicantly decreasing the gap between the cells. It is found the small gap design can prevent from the severe degradation of the signal quality for the high-speed signal referring to the perforated EBG power plane. The excellent GBN suppression performance with keeping reasonably good signal integrity for the proposed structure is validated both experimentally and numerically. Good agreement is seen. Index TermsElectromagnetic bandgap (EBG), ground bounce noise (GBN), high-speed digital circuits, power integrity, signal integrity, simultaneously switching noises.

I. INTRODUCTION

ROUND bounce noise (GBN), also known as simultaneous switching noise (SSN), on the power/ground planes is becoming one of the major concerns for the high-speed digital computer systems with fast edge rates, high clock frequencies, and low voltage levels. The resonance modes between the power and ground planes excited by the GBN causes signicant signal integrity (SI) problems and electromagnetic interference (EMI) issues for the high-speed circuits [1][3]. With fast increase of the clock speed of the high-speed digital circuits, the elimination of this noise is essential. Adding decoupling capacitors to create a low impedance path between power and ground planes is a typical way to suppress the GBN. However, in general, these capacitors are not effective at frequencies higher than 600 MHz due to their nite lead inductance. Recently, a new idea for eliminating the GBN is proposed by designing electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure on the ground or power plane [4][7]. The rst EBG power/ground plane design was demonstrated with 1.7 GHz stop-band bandwidth centered at 3.77 GHz [4]. Because the GBN is dominantly distributed at the low frequency range below 6 GHz [4], several researches focus on the EBG power plane design to either lower the stop-band center frequency or broaden the stopband bandwidth for more efciently suppressing the low frequency GBN. Although a design of the

inductance-enhanced high impedance surface (HIS) and the concept of cascading EBG structures with different stop-bands were proposed to achieve wider bandgap bandwidth [5], [6], there are some drawbacks. One is the substantial increase in fabrication cost because three or four layers metal are needed for implementing the HIS and much more power/ground planes area are occupied to cascade different stop-band EBG. The other is the performance is degraded at the transition frequency range between the two stop-bands for the cascading design. Furthermore, to our best knowledge, the stop-bands in the previous designs are all distributed above 1 GHz and would not cover the hundred MHz ranges, where the GBN energy is dominant. A novel power plane designed with a coplanar EBG structure is proposed in this work with 4-GHz stop-band covering from 600 MHz to 4.6 GHz. Without needing three or four layers metal, the proposed structure is based on the two-layer concept with designing a novel periodic EBG patterns on the power plane and still keeping continuous for the ground plane. The unit cell of the EBG power plane is consisted of one square pad and four L-shaped bridges on each side of the pad. The L-shaped bridges connecting between pads not only signicantly broaden the stop-band, but also keep the signal quality not degraded for the signal traces referring to the EBG-patterned power plane due to the increase of the mutual coupling between the neighboring pads. The distinctive behavior of the new EBG power plane both in super-wideband suppression of the GBN and keeping good SI is validated by measurement and simulation. II. STRUCTURE DESIGN AND GBN SUPPRESSION A. Design Concept Fig. 1(a) shows the proposed L-bridged EBG power/ground planes design. The ground plane is kept continuous and nine cells EBG with L-shaped bridges are etched on the power plane. The unit cell of the L-bridged EBG and its corresponding parameter notations is shown in Fig. 1(b). Compared with the traditional coplanar EBG structure with straight bridges [7], [8], the L-shaped bridge signicantly increase the effective inductance between adjacent cells and thus increase the stop-band bandwidth. However, it is known that the signal quality will be degraded as the high-speed signal refers to the perforated reference plane such as the proposed EBG power plane. The L-bridged EBG plane could signicantly ease the damage of the imperfect power plane to the signal quality because the mutual capacitance between adjacent cells can be increased by decreasing the gap . Decreasing will narrow the stop-band

Manuscript received June 8, 2004; revised September 27, 2004. This work was supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C., under Grand NSC912213-E-110-034. The review of this letter was arranged by Associate Editor J.-G. Ma. The authors are with the Department of Electrical of Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: wtl@mail.ee.nsysu.edu.tw) Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LMWC.2005.844216

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Fig. 3. Measured GBN suppression behavior for the noise excitation located at different locations, port2 and port3, respectively.

Fig. 1. Nine-cell EBG board. (a) 3-D view and the locations of three ports. (b) Parameters of a square unit cell.

Fig. 4. Four layer structure with transmission line transit between the L-bridged EBG power and solid ground plane.

Fig. 2. Comparison of jS j between the nine-cell PBG board and the reference board by the HFSS simulation and the measurement.

bandwidth for the traditional EBG structure with straight bridge due to the decrease of the bridge length (inductance), but its effect is relatively small for the L-shaped bridge design because the bridge is parallel to the edge of the cell. Fig. 1 shows an example design on a two-layer PCB with the dimension 90 mm 90 mm 0.4 mm. Nine square unit cells are etched on the power plane with their corresponding parameters 30 mm, 7.5 mm, 15.2 mm, 0.1 mm, 0.2 mm, and 0.65 mm. As shown in Fig. 1(a), three ports from 1 to 3 for the boards are located at (46 mm, 45 mm), (74 mm, 74 mm) and (74 mm, 45 mm), respectively, for measurement of the insertion loss of the structure. The original point (0, 0) is on the left corner of the PCB board as shown in Fig. 1(a). B. Broadband GBN Suppression Fig. 2 shows the measured and simulated for the designed L-bridged EBG power/ground planes. The insertion loss

of the reference board with both power and ground planes being solid is also presented in this gure for comparison. The EM tool HFSS is used to simulate the GBN behavior of the structure. Excellent agreement between the measurement and simulation from dc to 6 GHz is seen. Because the dispersion property of the FR4 substrate is not considered in the modeling, slight difference between them is seen at higher frequencies above 4 GHz. Compared with the reference board, it is clearly seen that the L-bridged EBG power plane behaves highly efcient GBN elimination with averagely 60 dB suppression in a wide-band range from about 600 MHz to 4.6 GHz (4 GHz bandwidth). The bandwidth is dened by the insertion loss lower than 30 dB. Fig. 3 shows the measured GBN suppression behavior for the noise excitation located at different locations, port2 and port3, respectively. The receiving port is all at port1. It is seen that the broadband GBN suppression behavior is almost the same for different excitation location of excitation. It implies that the low-period EBG power planes can omni-directionally eliminate the GBN on the power/ground planes. III. SIGNAL INTEGRITY FOR THE EBG POWER PLANE Although the novel EBG power plane demonstrates super wideband suppression of the GBN with a cost effective design of using only two layers metal, the degradation of the perforated power plane to the signal quality is needed to be evaluated. As shown in Fig. 4, we consider a signal trace of 80 mm passing from the rst layer to the fourth layer and back to the rst layer with two via transitions along the path. The second and third layer is the L-bridged EBG power and solid

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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 15, NO. 3, MARCH 2005

and MEW for the proposed EBG board is about 7.5% and 3.6%. The SI performance will be better if the signal trace is shorter or the data transmission rate is slower than 2.5 Gbps. IV. CONCLUSION A novel L-bridged EBG power plane is proposed in this paper with super-wideband suppression of the GBN from 600 Mz to 4.6 GHz. Compared with previous designs, this novel structure provides three advantages. First, the L-bridged power plane signicantly broadens the stop band bandwidth to 4 GHz and can cover to the low frequency range of 600 MHz. Second, the signal quality is still kept acceptably good for the signal referring to the perforated EBG power plane. Third, it is cost effective because only two layer metals are needed to design this novel power/ground planes structure. The excellent performance of the low-period PBG power planes is investigated both by measurement and simulation. REFERENCES
[1] S. Van den Berghe, F. Olyslager, D. De Zutter, J. De Moerloose, and W. Temmerman, Study of the ground bounce caused by power plane resonances, IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 111119, May 1998. [2] G.-T. Lei, R. W. Techentin, and B. K. Gilbert, High frequency characterization of power/ground-plane structures, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 47, no. 5, pp. 562569, May 1999. [3] T. L. Wu, S. T. Chen, J. N. Huang, and Y. H. Lin, Numerical and experimental investigation of radiation caused by the switching noise on the partitioned dc reference planes of high speed digital PCB, IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 3345, Feb. 2004. [4] R. Abhari and G. V. Eleftheriades, Metallo-dielectric electromagnetic bandgap structures for suppression and isolation of the parallel-plate noise in high-speed circuits, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 16291639, Jun. 2003. [5] T. Kamgaing and O. M. Ramahi, A novel power plane with integrated simultaneous switching noise mitigation capability using high impedance surface, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 2123, Jan. 2003. [6] S. Shahparnia and O. M. Ramahi, Simultaneous switching noise mitigation in PCB using cascaded high-impedance surfaces, Electron. Lett., vol. 40, no. 2, Jan. 2004. [7] T. L. Wu, Y. H. Lin, and S. T. Chen, A novel power planes with low radiation and broadband suppression of ground bounce noise using photonic bandgap structures, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 14, no. 7, pp. 337339, Jul. 2004. [8] F. R. Yang, K. P. Ma, Y. Q., and T. Itoh, A uniplanar compact photonicbandgap (UC-PBG) structure and its applications for microwave circuit, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 47, no. 8, pp. 15091514, Aug. 1999.

Fig. 5. Simulated eye patterns for (a) the reference board and (b) the proposed EBG board.

ground planes, respectively. The eye patterns at the output of the signal path is port (port 2) are simulated. The numerically calculated. The SPICE-compatible models are then extracted from the -parameter by a commercial tool SIDEA. According to the broadband SPICE models, the eye patterns are generated in the HSPICE environment with launching a pattern source of PRBS, nonreturn to zero (NRZ), coded at 2.5 GHz. The bit sequence swing is 500 mV and the nominal rise/fall time is 120 ps. Fig. 5(a) and (b) show the simulated eye patterns for the reference board and the proposed EBG board, respectively. Compared with the reference board, there is no severe degradation of the signal quality for the proposed EBG board. Two parameters, maximum eye open (MEO) and maximum eye width (MEW), are used to be metrics of the eye pattern quality. It is seen that for the reference board 435 mVand 358 ps, and for the EBG board 402 mV and 345 ps. The degradation of the MEO