Design of power delivery networks using power transmission lines and pseudo-balanced signaling for multiple I/Os

Abstract

Return path discontinuities (RPDs) cause the coupling between signal lines and the power delivery network, resulting in power supply noise and reduced timing and voltage margins at high speed. Prior work focused at reducing the RPD effect, usually through the use of power planes and decoupling capacitors. A new approach to address this issue replaces the plane structure with power transmission lines (PTLs), which removes the RPD effect. By eliminating the RPDs, the power supply noise is minimized. Therefore, voltage and timing margins can be improved to support higher data rates. In this paper, the application of the PTL is extended to the transmission of multiple parallel bits, and the resulting waveforms are compared to those using conventional power planes. Also, a new pseudo-balanced signaling scheme is used to further enhance signal integrity when using the PTL approach.