Pseudo-balanced signaling using power transmission lines for parallel links

Abstract

Power integrity has become an indispensable part to ensure signal integrity in high-speed systems. Simultaneous switching noise (SSN) in the power delivery network (PDN) is now one of major factors to place the limit on the noise margin for off-chip communication so that a great emphasis is being placed on controlling SSN. A power transmission line (PTL) has been suggested as a new PDN design to achieve near-zero SSN. In this paper, a new signaling scheme is proposed to address the issues associated with the PTL, and yield a significant improvement in signal integrity.