A novel and accurate methodology for design and characterization of wire-bond package performance for 5–10GHz applications

This paper presents novel and accurate design, simulation and measurement methodologies to characterize high-speed (5-10GHz) signal-path applications on standard Quad-Flat No-leads package (QFN) and Ball Grid Array (BGA) packages. The design of Integrated Circuit (IC) packages and Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) for high-speed communication (10Gbps+ data-rates) enabling consumer applications is aggressively driven by performance focus while meeting Time-To-Market (TTM) schedules to gain competitive advantage in the market. As a result, such designs demand a carefully verified design strategy for incorporating standard packaging technologies (such as QFN packages) in the high-performance space. This requires going beyond design, simulation and measurement “best-practices” for first-pass success, given that there is little “marginality/specification headroom” available in the electrical performance of simple packaging technologies. Additionally, stringent TTM pressures present another constraint of having to achieve “first-pass system functionality” in a short design cycle. Such requirements of design performance and cycle time demand the need to establish novel design, simulation and characterization frameworks which is the main theme of this paper. Additionally, excellent model-to-hardware correlation has been demonstrated in the paper to establish the accuracy of the proposed modeling and characterization methodologies.