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.
Foundational and advanced concepts for maintaining clean, reliable signals in high-speed designs. Covers measurement techniques, common pitfalls, and practical approaches to identifying and mitigating signal degradation in order to maintain signal integrity and power integrity in electrical designs.
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.
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.
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?
