3D Electromagnetic Modelling of Connector to PCB Via Transitions

This paper examines methods to electromagnetically model a hybrid land grid array (HLGA) connector and its associated printed circuit board (PCB) via individually with the goal of achieving the best correlation between their cascade and when modelled together as a single structure. The transition between the connector and the PCB via is of utmost importance as this is the location where the segmentation takes place. In this activity, the segmentation takes place on or close by the solder ball transitioning a signal between the two components. The solder ball location and any associated pads and/or dog-bone traces are becoming more worthy of attention as signal rise times decrease and data rates increase. Different excitation port setup techniques are considered at the transition. The signal integrity (SI) metrics of the cascaded models generated from each method tested are compared against a reference merged model. Due to differences observed between the cascaded and the merged models for one of the conventional modelling methods, a modelling correction method is investigated to achieve a closer match between cascaded and merged models.