Thermal Impact on High Speed PCB Interconnects

As signal speeds increase, small imperfections start to dictate the performance of interconnects. Thermal effects are an inseparable aspect of interconnects due to self-heating caused by the flow of current, and due to environmental heating in high speed designs. This paper presents in detail, thermal effects and their impact on insertion loss, crosstalk and phase of high-speed signals. The paper also describes the thermal sensitivity on various aspects of interconnect design such as inter pair spacing, trace height, and dielectric thickness. For our analysis, simulations were performed using field solvers for temperatures ranging from 20°C to 100°C. Finally, results are analyzed with percentage variation in copper loss versus dielectric losses.