Saturday, May 11, 2019

Differential Pairs - Practical Design Constraints

High-speed

Differential Pair phase matching is length matching within the Differential Pair.


Practical High-speed Phase Matching is ~5% of the fastest transition time where the transition time is the rise or fall time, which ever edge is the fastest.

Below is a quote from PcbCart.

"Therefore, in the process of high-speed PCB design, relative delay of differential signal line in the routing regulation rules can be set to be 0.05 Tr (5% of fastest transition time) that is capable of meeting the requirement of signal integrity."

"The following three methods can be applied to obtain the value of Tr:


 Rise/fall time can be directly obtained from component manuals. However, in most situations, this parameter isn't provided.

 Value of Tr can be obtained from Ramp keywords from component IBIS (Input/Output Buffer Informational Specification) model. Rise/fall time parameters under Ramp keywords are generally measured at output port connected with a resistor of 50Ω, which are usually 20% to 80% of final voltage time. Since the parameters are obtained without considering the influence of package, it's strict for us to use rise/fall time as the value of Tr.

 The value of Tr can be estimated according to the minimum clock frequency or maximum clock frequency of output signals. Because distributive rise edge is approximately 10% of clock frequency in most high-speed digital systems, the value of Tr can be estimated with the minimum clock period Tclk provided based on formula: Tr = Tclk x 10%."

Source (link): PcbCart
Differential Isometric Processing and Simulation Verification of High-Speed Design

Here's some simple methods for calculating the 5% phase matching tolerance.


Using the Saturn PCB Toolkit


Select the Wavelength Calculator tab, select Period and input the transition time (Rise or Fall Time), slide the Wavelength Divider to 1/20 (note 1/20 = 5%).


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If you can not find the transition time enter 1/10 of the clock period  or enter the frequency multiplied by 10 and slide the Wavelength Divider to 1/20.

Note 1/20 = 5%.

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The frequency was multiplied by 10 because the transition time is approximately equal to 10% of the clock period and time is the reciprocal of frequency.

The period of 8000MHz is 1/8000Mhz = 125pSec

The period (reciprocal) of 800MHz is 1/800Mhz = 1.25nSec
The transition time (Rise or Fall time) is typically equal to the clock period divided by 10.

Low-speed


Next let's look at a Low Voltage Low Speed (32MHz) Differential Pair.


See Datasheet Page 6. AM26LV31E Low Voltage Differential Line Driver


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Note that the typical signal transition time (Tr) is 5nSec or 5000pSec.


5% of 5nSec = 0.25nSec = 250pSec


For typical FR4 with an Effective Er of 4 each pSec equals appropriately 6mils of trace. 

Using this 5% of Tr thumb rule we have 250pSec * 6mils =1.5 inches for phase length matching the low-speed differential pairs.

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Related Links:

See page 6 of this article by Lee Ritchey.

"LVDS is specified as working properly with length mismatches of 400 pSec. Converting this to a length results in a tolerance of approximately ±1200 mils or ±1.2 inches. Clearly, imposing a length matching requirement of ±10 mils is excessively tight."

Source: https://www.speedingedge.com/PDF-Files/DiffSigDesign.pdf

That's it !