Broadband signal integrity characterization of a high speed differential backplane pair

The present paper discusses the need of using full wave analysis for signal integrity studies on high speed differential backplane pairs with signals ranging from 2.5 to 6.25Gbs. The traces and the associated vias are imported from a commercial layout tool and then simulated by means of a 3D full wave simulator. The impact of the back drilling technique to control the via stub effect and the impact of the ground vias surrounding the signal pair is studied in terms of both S- parameter and eye-diagram waveforms. An equivalent circuit model is then extracted by using the Model Order Reduction (MOR) technique built in the same simulation tool.