Application of negative group delay active circuits to reduce the 50% propagation Delay of RC-line model

Abstract

This paper presents a new method developed to reduce the propagation delay by using a negative group delay (NGD) active circuit. Analytical expressions are proposed to demonstrate the validity of our approach in the case of an RC-transmission line model. The synthesis method of NGD circuits versus the line length is detailed. For a 0.5 Gbit/s digital signal and a 2-cm-long RC-line model, time-domain simulations carried out with a high-frequency circuit simulator showed that the 50% propagation delay was reduced by 94%. Finally, potential applications of this method to compensate for time delays in different interconnect configurations (VLSI, package, on-chip, long-line, ...) are discussed.