Fast Prediction and Optimal Design for Eye-Height Performance of Mismatched Transmission Lines

As the data rate becomes higher, the intersymbol interference influences the signal quality more seriously. In this paper, a simple methodology is presented to predict eye height for general transmission line systems with mismatched source and load terminations. Simple formulas are derived to estimate the eye height with the consideration of the reflection coefficients at both ends, the loss constant, and a matched pulse response of the transmission line for the cases of long and short transmission lines. Furthermore, a contour map is successfully constructed to represent the variations of eye height versus the reflection coefficients and used to facilitate the termination design for the best signal integrity performance. Finally, the time domain simulations and experiments are also provided to verify the proposed methodology.