Transmission line losses—driven by skin effect and dielectric properties—play a critical role in degrading high-speed signal integrity and eye performance.
Transmission line loss directly affects eye diagram quality, with around −12 dB at Nyquist marking the limit before signal integrity rapidly degrades without equalization.
Eric is a professor in the EE department at Colorado University, Boulder and a Fellow at Teledyne LeCroy. He has a BS in Physics from MIT and a PhD in Physics from the University of Arizona, Tucson. He enjoys DesignCon and writing for SI Journal.
Understanding how return currents create inductive switching noise and low-frequency resistive crosstalk is essential to designing low-noise ground planes.
A simple 50-ohm source series termination enables accurate, low-cost power rail measurements without the reflections caused by direct coax connections.
A real-time oscilloscope can help engineers identify EMI sources and reduce radiated emissions before submitting products for costly FCC compliance testing.
Understanding Thevenin source impedance and oscilloscope termination reveals why reflections distort rise time measurements in unmatched transmission line setups.
A simple rise-time experiment reveals why every oscilloscope user must understand transmission line behavior when measuring signals with sub-10 ns edges.
