On the Design of a Stepped Mixed Signal Transmission Line with Defected Microstrip Structure for High-Frequency PCB Traces

The paper addresses the challenge of crosstalk in neighboring paths on PCBs, emphasizing its growing importance with the advancement of electronic circuits in terms of speed and frequency. The proposed solution involves the introduction of a novel W-shaped Defected Microstrip Structure (DMS) on a step-shaped coupled transmission lines to mitigate near-end crosstalk (NEXT) and far-end crosstalk (FEXT) using mixed signal input. A novel W-shaped defective microstrip structure (DMS) that is etched on step-shaped coupled transmission lines. The proposed technique focuses on minimizing the electromagnetic coupling strength with a minimum spacing of one time the width of the trace. It optimizes the ratio of capacitive coupling and inductive coupling between the coupled microstrip transmission lines to improve crosstalk. The frequency domain simulation, conducted using Computer Simulation Technology (CST), indicates promising results. The insertion loss (|S21|), near-end crosstalk (|S31|), and far-end crosstalk (|S41|) of the suggested structure are reported as 1.425dB, <25dB, and <25dB, respectively, over the frequency range of 0 to 10 GHz. Eye diagram characterizations are done and measured in terms of eye height, eye width, jitter and data rate are reported as 0.942V, 695.5ps, 6.69ps and 1.4Gbps respectively.