RLC Interconnect Crosstalk Waveform Evaluation

The constant evolution in integrated circuit technology has led to an increase in the digital chip switching speed. There is thus growing interest in the inductance associated with signal lines. Inductive coupling effects on interconnects is an emerging concern in high performance digital integrated circuits. In this paper, a new crosstalk RLC noise expression is proposed and based on an RLC transmission line model associated with each propagation mode, which is capable of predicting the noise amplitude and the noise waveform of an RLC interconnect. The interconnect distribution is condensed in an equivalent lumped model to simplify the analytical expression. Several simulations revealed that the proposed expression predicts the waveform quite accurately. This simplified analytical expression of crosstalk noise is sufficiently accurate to be effectively incorporated in state-of-the-art noise calculators.