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 when to use a TDR, WavePulser 40iX, or VNA depends on bandwidth, rise time, port count, and whether you need time-domain impedance or frequency-domain S-parameters.
Understanding how return currents flow—and why they follow the path of lowest loop impedance—is essential to controlling reflections, crosstalk, and EMI in high-speed designs.
Fast-rising signals can introduce transmission line reflections that appear as ringing on an oscilloscope, but proper 50-ohm termination can eliminate these artifacts.
What if we remove the probes from the equation by connecting our DUT's output directly to the oscilloscope's analog input using a 3-ft. 50-Ω coaxial cable?
