Impact of planar electromagnetic band-gap structures on IR-DROP and signal integrity in high speed printed circuit boards

This paper presents an application of electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structures in printed circuit boards (PCB) for power plane noise reduction in the band of high speed digital signals at a data rate of 5 Gbps. The typical EBG geometry that covers entirely the PCB surface is replaced by size-reduced EBG areas to minimize signal integrity problems associated to interconnects referenced to the EBG patterned plane. Several small EBGs are placed to isolate three ICs that are supplied with the same voltage level, thus creating three areas surrounding the ICs. Furthermore the EBGs are designed to allow the same voltage regular module to supply the three ICs. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the advantages in using the planar EBG structures, and offers indications to overcome the disadvantages in using the EBGs i.e. IR-Drop for the static current supply, broken reference for high speed signal traces.