Application of a New Power Distribution Scheme for Complex Printed Circuit Boards for High-Speed Signaling

This paper presents a new power distribution scheme using power transmission lines (PTLs) applied to complex printed circuit boards. The structure consists of three daughter cards stacked on a motherboard where the board-board connectors used for connection are highly inductive. We show that in spite of the inductive connections, good signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) are possible without relying too much on decoupling capacitors. This is achieved using a combination of PTL that replaces the voltage planes and current steering techniques. The PTL scheme described in this paper can be used for high-speed digital signaling. The SI and PI are demonstrated for up to 3-Gbit/s transmission between the boards.