Modeling methods for power/ground plane structures in electronic packages

Typical power delivery network of the high-speed electronic packages and boards consists of multiple layers of power/ground planes. The power/ground structures contain small gaps for DC isolation and via holes for signal routing. Since these small discontinuities can be a source of horizontal or vertical coupling of electromagnetic energy, their effects are not negligible in the design of high-speed systems. However, considering small features in a large design can be computationally inefficient due to large memory consumption and long simulation time. Consequently, a great deal of research to develop a modeling method, which can produce accurate results with computational efficiency, is being conducted worldwide. In this paper, we review and compare three selected modeling methods: multilayer triangular element method (M-TEM), multilayer finite element method, and multilayer finite difference method, with major focus on M-TEM.