Embedded passive components for improved power plane decoupling

In this paper, a detailed power integrity study is described that compares the behavior of surface-mount devices and embedded components for power decoupling. Through measurements and simulations, it is found that when the layer count of the board is low, there is no significant difference between both technologies. When the number of layers increases, the short connection for the embedded components is clearly superior to the surface-mount capacitor. The resonance frequencies for the embedded capacitor do not change significantly with the increased layer count. The case with the surface-mount capacitor however, shows a large increase in parasitic inductance due to the long vias through the board.