Signal Integrity

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If you are missing your engineering tools, or would like to build up your home lab, or want to finally work on that hobby electronics project you’ve put off for the last five years, or you want to introduce your kids to the thrill of measuring or simulating, now would be a good time to consider our list of free or very low-cost hardware and software simulation tools.

Measuring low impedance components with a 2-port vector network analyzer (VNA) is an essential technique that typically requires a VNA that costs more than $20,000. In this article, see how the authors measured an MLCC using $500 and an open-source simulation tool.

Sometimes, when SI and PI worlds collide, we get the best of both worlds. By borrowing a simple impedance measuring technique from the PI world, we have another tool at our disposal to measure true characteristic impedance from a uniformly designed transmission line in the SI world, read on to learn more.

The most notable difference between DDR5 and previous generations is the introduction of decision feedback equalization, a technique used in serial link systems to improve the integrity of received signals.  In the wake of the new technology, this short article outlines some of the fundamental signal integrity concepts in the context of DDR5.

We want to follow this mantra of 85 ohms for PCIe, but it may not be so easy. Here’s a look at exactly what the spec says, and what we can do about it.

Gustavo Blando, a Samtec signal integrity architect, recently presented “DC Block Capacitor Location (Does It Matter)?” at a Samtec geEEk and spEEk webinar. Here he presents a summary of some of his key points.

Those interested in automating signal integrity analysis using machine learning should take a look at this work, which includes an example of a 112 Gb SerDes system analysis.

Mechanical needs and power limits are at odds with what is optimal for signal integrity. Having a metric that guides us to the sufficient SI choice rather than going for the optimal SI choice ultimately saves cost and decreases time to market. Read on for the details on Brandon Gore’s technique.

SIJ technical editor Eric Bogatin notes that there are some problems that occur over and over again across product families and applications. They have a handful of essential principles at their underlying root cause. In this blog, he explains that if we really understand these underlying principles, the root cause of the problems will be more apparent and their solutions closer to implement.

With more than three times more webinars offered in our Covid-19 era, we have more opportunities to accelerate up the learning curve or waste a lot of time. I sacrificed hours of my time watching dozens of webinars to identify these three princes. Check them out. They are well worth your time.