What is Controlled Impedance Trace ? A Simple Guide To PCB Design For Embedded System by cawan (cawan[at]ieee.org or chuiyewleong[at]hotmail.

com) on 14/11/2012 In embedded hardware design, the interconnects among SMDs on the PCB are mission critical individually. For example, the trace in connecting clock source to the DDR-RAM is very crucial in order to ensure the DDR-RAM can work in proper. Otherwise, the jitter issue will be the root cause to stop the hardware from working properly. Well, this is about the topic of signal integrity. In fact, any single trace on the PCB has its own characteristic impedance, and the characteristic impedance is due to inductance and capacitance, which are based on the factors of trace's length and width, dielectric material of the PCB, thickness of PCB, and etc. In electromagnetic, characteristic impedance is also known as Zo. Sometimes, it is easily to mix up the characteristic impedance (Zo) with the intrinsic impedance (Zi), but both of them are really different. Instead of considering inductance and capacitance in characteristic impedance, the intrinsic impedance is based on permeability and permittivity, which is more on the factors of electric and magnetic fields of transmission medium. Hence, the intrinsic impedance has wider scope than the characteristic impedance, and it covers any type of transmission medium such as transmission line, waveguide, or even freespace. Well, the intrinsic impedance is out of the topic of embedded hardware design, and it is better to refocus to characteristic impedance again. So, we can make a simple assumption here, any single trace on the PCB has its own characteristic impedance. But, there is another issue here, which is, when we talk about impedance, it is closely related to the frequency. Then, what frequency we are going to refer when measuring the characteristic impedance ? For example, in doing impedance measurement of a loud speaker, it is always to refer the frequency is at 1kHz. Fine, it is not the same issue as in characteristic impedance. Instead, it is about the instantaneous voltage to current ratio of the transmission line, or the trace, in our discussion here. Of course, the ratio is based on the inductance and capacitance of the trace. In most of the time, the characteristic impedance (Zo) is defined as SQRT(L/T), where L and T represent inductance and capacitance, respectively. On the other hand, for your own info, the intrinsic impedance (Zi) is defined as SQRT(u/e), where u and e represent permeability and permittivity, respectively. Then what is controlled impedance trace now ? We know the impedance is about the characteristic impedance, how about "controlled" ? Yes, it means the characteristic impedance of the trace need to be controlled at a specific value. But why we need to do so ? Yes, it is based on the specification. For example, the characteristic impedance for Compact PCI standard backplane is 65 ohm. How about DDR-RAM ? By referring "Hardware and Layout Design Considerations for DDR2 SDRAM Memory Interface" from freescale (http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/app_note/AN2910.pdf), it is stated in checklist item 37 on page 5 about the differential clock should be routed at 50-60 ohm of impedance for each single-ended with proper spacing. Why we need to do so ? Can we simply ignore it ? No, it is really not recommended. The reason is the impedance should be matched in order to prevent the occurrence of reflection. In general, for those transmission lines without proper termination with matched impedance, the incoming signal will be reflected in different phase, which is dependent to the level of mismatching. This will affect the signal integrity of the transmission line. But, our issue right now is the trace will be terminated at the DDR-RAM which is about 50 ohm, and what will happen if the trace itself is not in 50 ohm. Well, the answer is simple, this will cause signal degradation and distortion, and eventually incurring jitter and noise effects. But, how the PCB manufacturer can make sure a trace has a controlled impedance, let's say 50 ohm, accordingly ? For example, in the PCB design of our embedded hardware, we specify all the traces with 5 mil (0.005 inch) width must have controlled impedance of 50 ohm where the tolerance is +/- 5 ohm. So, when the PCB manufacturer start to fabricate

the board, in regarding to those traces with 5 mil width, they might adjust the width of the traces based on the PCB conditions such as dielectric thickness, dielectric material, length of individual traces, and etc, accordingly. Hence, for those traces with 5 mil width in PCB drawing might have slightly changed individually on the real board. As a result, each of the traces will have characteristic impedance within the range of 45 ohm to 55 ohm. So, the resulting board should work well accordingly.