502 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 45, NO.
3, AUGUST 2003
SPICE Equivalent Circuits of
Frequency-Domain Responses
Giulio Antonini, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The paper proposes a method for the synthesis of
SPICE-compatible broad-band electrical models of frequency-do-
main responses approximated by rational functions. First- and
second-order equivalent circuits with controlled sources are used
as building blocks to generate equivalent circuit representa-
tions—totally compatible with commercial circuit solvers—of the
frequency-dependent responses. Fundamental properties of the
method are discussed and details of its implementation are de-
scribed. The proposed approach has demonstrated to be suitable
for providing equivalent circuits of interconnects, power/ground
plane structures and PCB discontinuities.
Index Terms—Equivalent circuits, frequency-domain responses,
SPICE-compatible models.
I. INTRODUCTION
O NE OF THE MOST important problems in electromag-
netic transient modeling is the inclusion of frequency-de-
pendent effects in time-domain simulations. An example is the
inclusion of dispersive media and losses in transient electromag-
netic analysis. Efficient broad-band modeling of transmission
lines must also take into account the frequency-dependent be-
havior of dielectrics. Furthermore, as processor speeds extend
into the gigahertz range, more accurate electrical modeling is
required for the power distribution network along with a va-
riety of interconnect discontinuities such as pins and vias. In-
cluding these dispersive effects in time-domain simulations can
be achieved by means of convolutions between terminal quanti-
ties (e.g. node voltages) and impulse responses characterizing
the dispersive system. The numerical solution, although pos-
sible, is computationally inefficient because of the large com-
puter resources which are required, in terms of memory storage
and CPU time. It is well known that low-order rational function
approximations of the impulse response are much more attrac-
tive than the convolutions that can be obtained via a recursive
formulation. The details of an efficient vector fitting (VF) pro-
cedure can be found in [1], where, a general methodology is
presented ensuring that the poles of the generated closed forms
responses are stable, or, in other words, all poles have nonposi-
tive real parts. In addition, [2] shows how the Debye’s type fit-
ting can be successfully used when dealing with functions char-
acterized by smooth behavior, approximating the frequency-de-
pendent function with a rational function having only real neg-
ative parts and real positive residues. The main advantage of
this approach is that it guarantees causality as it satisfies the
Manuscript received January 28, 2002; revised March 11, 2003.
The author is with the UAq EMC Laboratory, Department of Electrical
Engineering, University of L’Aquila, I-67040 L’Aquila, Italy (e-mail: an-
tonini@ing.univaq.it).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TEMC.2003.815528
0018-9375/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
Kramers–Kronig dispersion relation in the frequency domain.
Furthermore, the Debye approximation can be easily incorpo-
rated in time-domain algorithms [3], [4]. A consequence of the
ensured causality in the use of this fitting model is that an equiv-
alent circuit representation of smooth rational functions can be
easily found. When dealing with signal integrity (SI) problems,
it is highly desirable to achieve a multiport equivalent circuit
representation to be inserted into circuit simulators. In [5], a sys-
tematic methodology is presented for the synthesis of SPICE-
compatible broad-band models for discontinuities such as vias
and pins. A two-step approach is used in order to achieve lumped
equivalent circuits representing the electromagnetic measured
(or calculated) response of the discontinuity. Even in that case,
only real poles with nonpositive real parts are used ensuring sta-
bility and passivity at the same time, being the Kramers–Kronig
dispersion relation satisfied. With the increasing of the clock
frequency in the range of gigahertz, the physical size of the
printed circuit boards (PCBs) must be taken into account as
electromagnetic retardation becomes significant and PCB res-
onances appear causing complex pole pairs be introduced in the
rational approximation of the impulse response. Full-wave mod-
eling of such large structures in a wide frequency range is ex-
tremely time and memory consuming, making equivalent cir-
cuits more appealing. In [6] and [7], an circuit is pro-
posed as an equivalent representation for a complex pole pair.
In this paper, a different circuit representation for complex pairs
is proposed for the generation of SPICE [8] compatible equiva-
lent circuit of power-ground distribution systems, interconnects
and discontinuities from their three-dimensional models. More
specifically, it is shown how a complex pole pair can be syn-
thesized by means of elements and only one controlled
source, allowing the rational approximation of impedances or
admittances to be implemented in a circuit simulator enabling
both time and frequency analyses. Some test cases are presented
demonstrating that the proposed approach is suitable to be ap-
plied to transmission lines, interconnects as well as on-board
discontinuities such as via holes.
II. EQUIVALENT CIRCUIT FOR RATIONAL APPROXIMATION
OF TRANSFER FUNCTIONS
The rational approximation of a transfer function can
be written as
(1)
tbeing he complex frequency, and the th
residue and pole which have been extracted by using a fitting
ANTONINI: SPICE EQUIVALENT CIRCUITS OF FREQUENCY-DOMAIN RESPONSES 503

Fig. 1. Equivalent RL circuit for real pole synthesis.

Fig. 2. Series RLC circuit.

procedure. The VF technique [1] has been found to be suitable

to this aim. When dealing with SI problems, the matrix is
the most common two-port representation. Anyway, it is always (6)
possible to convert parameters to the representation
[9], and then obtaining the or equivalent circuit. There- In the following, it will be shown how to represent a complex
fore, is, in the following, assumed to be an admittance-type pole pair by means of two different equivalent circuits.
function without loss of generality. 1) First Equivalent Circuit: The input admittance of a series
Having in mind this assumption, the constant term and the circuit, shown in Fig. 2, is written in terms of its residues
-proportional one can be synthesized with a resistance and a and poles as
capacitance whose values are and . For the sake of clarity,
it is convenient to distinguish the case of real poles from that of
complex pole pairs.

A. Equivalent Circuit for Real Poles

Let us consider the series circuit represented in Fig. 1 to
synthesize a function with a real pole. The admittance
of a series circuit is

(2)
(7)
Its pole and residue are
in which

(3)
with
Given a pair of a pole and residue extracted by a fitting proce-
dure, it is straightforward obtaining the corresponding couple of
and parameters

(8)

(4) By comparing (5) to (7), it is clear that can not be repre-

sented by the input admittance because it has a zero
The equivalent circuit synthesis is straightforward in this case. located in the origin while does not have, unless the fol-
lowing condition holds:
B. Equivalent Circuit for Complex Pole Pair
Let , , , and be pairs of complex and conjugate (9)
residues and poles, respectively. The corresponding transfer Equation (7) shows that has the same structure as the
function is first part of function . This means that it can be written as

(10)
Some algebra provides the values of the series circuit pa-
rameters. In fact, the sum of poles and residues , re-
(5)
spectively, reads
where
(11)

(12)
504 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 45, NO. 3, AUGUST 2003

Fig. 4. Parallel RLC circuit.

Fig. 3. Equivalent series RLC circuit for complex pole pair synthesis.

In this case, the parallel circuit input impedance is

Therefore, and parameters can be easily evaluated as

(13)

(14)

The value of capacitance is obtained by (7) and (13) as

(15a) (20)

(15b) in which

The synthesis of the additional part can be achieved by

observing that it has the same denominator and hence the same
poles of the first part and therefore it can be obtained
from the same topology. The voltage across the capacitor is with
given by

(16) (21)
This allows us to obtain the additional term as
Function in (20) can be used as a building block of
(17) the transfer function in (5)

On the other hand, the coefficient can be obtained as

(18) (22)
in which the values of the lumped elements of the parallel
at any complex frequency . circuit in Fig. 4 are
The overall equivalent circuit of the function is a series
circuit in parallel with a voltage-controlled current source (23)
(VCCS) whose voltage is and controlling factor
in which is frequency independent and given by (18). The (24)
resulting equivalent circuit is shown in Fig. 3. The total current
is thus given by
(25)

(19) The coefficient is evaluated as before

The synthesis of function by means of a parallel (26)

circuit (see Fig. 4) can be carried out through the same steps by
means of duality. at any complex frequency .
ANTONINI: SPICE EQUIVALENT CIRCUITS OF FREQUENCY-DOMAIN RESPONSES 505

Fig. 7. Second parallel equivalent circuit for a complex pole pair.

Fig. 5. Equivalent parallel RLC circuit for complex pole pair synthesis.

Fig. 6. Second series equivalent circuit for a complex pole pair.

Finally, the additional term can be obtained from the current

flowing the inductance of the same parallel circuit

(27)
The additional term is therefore

Fig. 8. Poles distribution of the open-ended transmission-line input impedance

(28) Z .
The equivalent circuit is the series of a parallel circuit with
The previous nonlinear set of equations can be solved in a closed
a current-controlled voltage source (CCVS), as shown in Fig. 5.
form providing the following circuit parameters:
The total voltage is given by

(29)

2) Second Equivalent Circuit: An alternative lumped circuit

synthesizing a complex pole pair is obtained by comparing the
input admittance of the circuit shown in Fig. 6

(30)

with that in (5).

The following correspondences can be established: (32)

Of course, its dual circuit can be used to obtain the same com-
plex pole pair as an equivalent impedance, shown in Fig. 7. The
corresponding input impedance is

(33)
(31)
506 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 45, NO. 3, AUGUST 2003
TABLE I
EXTRACTED POLES OF OPEN-ENDED TRANSMISSION-LINE INPUT IMPEDANCE
The circuit parameters can be evaluated by duality with respect
to the series equivalent circuit previously described providing
(34)
It is worth underlining that the equivalent circuits shown in the
Figs. 3 and 6 provide an exact synthesis of a complex pole pair
in terms of equivalent admittance, and those in Figs. 5 and 7
provide a synthesis in terms of equivalent impedance.
III. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
In this section, the proposed synthesis approach is applied to
three different structures. It is worth reminding that the standard
VF procedure while ensuring the stability which is enforced
flipping the poles with in the left-half plane, does
not provide residues satisfying necessarily, the conditions spec-
ified in [10]. This means that, although it is able to evaluate a
good rational approximation of the given transfer function, it
may not be passive. Passivity is here enforced, when needed, by
means of the technique described in [11]. Alternatively passivity
can be also enforced at the discrete electromagnetic model level
using some model-order reduction techniques as described in
[12].
Fig. 9. Frequency spectra of (a) real part and (b) imaginary part of the
open-ended transmission-line input impedance Z obtained by means of the
transmission line theory, the VF technique and the SPICE equivalent circuit.
A. Synthesis of Open-Ended Transmission Line Input
Impedance
As a first test of the proposed procedure, the synthesis of the
transmission line input impedance is considered. The transmis-
sion line is characterized by the following per unit length:
1.4 m, 0.63 H/m, 0.11 nF m, mS/m.
The open-ended input impedance has been fitted by means
of the VF technique by using 30 poles. The fitting procedure has
provided two real poles and 14 complex pairs, shown in Fig. 8.
The real poles and the complex poles with positive imaginary
part are listed in Table I.
The component values of the equivalent circuit are given in
Appendix A.
Fig. 9(a) and (b) shows the plots of the real and imaginary
parts of the original impedance , those obtained fitting the
same input impedance, and those simulated by means of the
SPICE equivalent circuit. As clearly seen in Fig. 10, the pro-
posed synthesis allows a satisfactory approximation of the open-
ANTONINI: SPICE EQUIVALENT CIRCUITS OF FREQUENCY-DOMAIN RESPONSES 507

Fig. 12. Frequency spectra of (a) magnitude and (b) phase of the open-ended
stripline input impedance admittance Z .

Fig. 10. Percentage error on (a) magnitude and (b) phase of the open-ended
transmission-line input impedance Z obtained by means of the SPICE
equivalent circuit.

Fig. 13. Equivalent 5 circuit.

TABLE II
EXTRACTED POLES OF STRIPLINE TWO-PORT REPRESENTATION

Fig. 11. Stripline geometry.

ended transmission-line input impedance, being the per-

centage errors on magnitude and phase of the order of and
, respectively.
508 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 45, NO. 3, AUGUST 2003

Fig. 14. Equivalent VF of 5 circuit admittances (a) Y and (b) Y .

Fig. 15. Stripline scattering parameters:. (a) S and (b) S obtained by

B. Stripline Two-Port Representation means of the PEEC method, the VF technique, the SPICE equivalent circuit,
and closed formulas [16].
As a second test, a stripline terminated on 50- resistances is
considered (see Fig. 11). The structure has been studied using
a partial-element-equivalent-circuit (PEEC) based full-wave TABLE III
solver [13]–[15]. The accuracy of the numerical method has EXTRACTED POLES OF THE THROUGH HOLE VIA TWO PORT REPRESENTATION
been tested by comparison with the results obtained using
theoretical results [16]. The rational real representation of the
open-ended input impedance is synthesized by means
of the equivalent SPICE circuit. The VF procedure allows a
satisfactory fitting using two real poles and five pairs of com-
plex and conjugate poles. All the poles are stable. Fig. (12a)
and (b) shows the frequency spectra of the magnitude and
phase of the input impedance , those of the fitted function
- as obtained by the VF procedure, and finally those
of the synthesized function - obtained from the
equivalent circuit.
As a further test, the frequency response of Port 1 and Port 2
voltages for the matched stripline are evaluated by using the be extremely small, thus leading to large computer memory re-
PEEC method. The high aspect ratios due to the finite thick- quirements and long simulation CPU time. The two-port rep-
ness of traces and planes causes the spatial discretization step resentation of this structure is highly desired especially when
ANTONINI: SPICE EQUIVALENT CIRCUITS OF FREQUENCY-DOMAIN RESPONSES
Fig. 16. Percentage error on scattering parameters obtained by the SPICE
equivalent circuit: (a) S , (b) S .
different driving and load conditions have to be considered. Fur-
thermore, its equivalent circuit could be embedded in a circuit
environment making possible the usage of circuit solvers like
SPICE. The proposed synthesis approach can be useful to this
aim. The following five-step procedure is used to achieve the
SPICE-compatible equivalent circuit:
Step 1) scattering parameters extraction by means of a
full-wave electromagnetic simulator;
Step 2) parameters evaluation;
Step 3) building of the equivalent circuit (see Fig. 13);
Step 4) residues and poles extraction of admittances , satisfactory, the error being less than 1 dB for both the
, and ;
Step 5) SPICE-compatible equivalent circuit synthesis ac-
cording to the proposed approach.
Step 4) has been accomplished using ten poles. The VF tech-
nique has been adopted to extract poles and residues of admit-
tances , , and , which have been synthesized in the
509
Fig. 17. Through hole via: (a) board stack-up and (b) location of the ports.
equivalent circuit and simulated in a SPICE environment ac-
cording to the proposed approach. Five complex pairs have been
found and listed in Table II.
The equivalent VF diagrams for admittances and are il-
lustrated in Fig. (14a) and (b), exhibiting a good agreement with
the original functions. It is worth noting that the first resonance
is exactly reproduced.
The resulting scattering parameters are shown in Fig. 15.
The extracted equivalent circuit, the VF approximation, and the
PEEC full-wave analysis overlap over one another, showing
the accuracy of the proposed technique The comparison with
results obtained by using the closed formulas in [16] is also
and parameters. This difference is due to the limitation
of the closed formulas that do not take into account the finite
dimensions of the structure under test.
Finally, the percentage errors on and parameters are
shown in Fig. 16(a) and (b). The PEEC-method-based results
have been assumed as a reference. It is clearly seen that the
equivalent circuit has provided a good accuracy, the error being
within 5% ad 2.5% for and parameters, respectively.
510 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 45, NO. 3, AUGUST 2003

Fig. 18. Equivalent VF of 5 circuit admittances (a)Y and (b) Y obtained by

means of the FIT, the VF technique, and the SPICE equivalent circuit.

C. Through Hole via Two-Port Representation
The third test considers a single via connecting the top and
bottom layers in a nine-layer board, as depicted in Fig. 17(a).
The location of the ports is illustrated in Fig. 17(b). The overall
structure has been simulated by the finite integration technique
(FIT) [17], [18], a full-wave technique whose integral form en-
sures stability and conservation properties of the discrete fields.
The same steps outlined before have been followed to obtain
a SPICE-compatible representation of the two port system, in
the frequency rage 300 MHz–10 GHz. In this case, ten poles
have been used in fitting admittances , , . The extracted
poles are listed in Table III.
The magnitude spectra of and obtained by means of
the full-wave simulation and those fitted are depicted in Fig. 18.
The agreement is good. Fig. 19 shows the scattering parameters
provided by FIT along with those obtained using the cell fit-
ting the admittances , , by means of the VF approach
and those obtained by means of the SPICE equivalent circuit.
Once more, the results confirm how the proposed method al-
lows one to obtain a rigorous equivalent circuit for a low-rank
Fig. 19. Scattering parameters of through hole via: (a) S and (b) S
obtained by means of the FIT, the VF technique, and the SPICE equivalent
circuit.
approximation of a two-port system. It is worth noticing that
the full-wave simulation performed by means of the commercial
code based on the FIT [19] takes 6 h 37 min, while the equiva-
lent circuit simulated by SPICE requires less than 1 min, to be
analyzed. Finally, the percentage errors on the scattering param-
eters have been computed and shown in Fig. 20 demonstrating
the effectiveness of the fitting and synthesis approach in cap-
turing the physical behavior of the system under analysis. As
seen, the error remains less than 2.5% for both and (b) .
IV. CONCLUSION
With the increase into the gigahertz range of processor speed
full-wave simulation of interconnects and discontinuities is
necessary for SI analysis. Large bandwidth simulations are ex-
tremely time and memory consuming. Fitting or reduced-order
models can be successfully used to generate low-rank approx-
imations of one-port or two-port systems. In this paper, ,
ANTONINI: SPICE EQUIVALENT CIRCUITS OF FREQUENCY-DOMAIN RESPONSES 511

pole pairs. The proposed synthesis technique is able to provide

SPICE-compatible circuits and has been validated by means of
several test cases such as transmission lines, interconnects and
through hole vias. In any case, it leads to equivalent circuits
which can be embedded in a CAD environment, allowing
efficient frequency-domain simulations.

APPENDIX A
According to the synthesis procedure outlined in Section II,
the component values of the equivalent circuit synthesized for
the case study are listed in Table IV. Real poles are referred
as poles while complex pair poles are indicated as poles.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to thank Prof. A. Orlandi for the helpful
discussions and Ing. A. Ciccomancini for providing the numer-
ical data for one of the tests and the reviewers for the interesting
suggestions which have helped to improve the paper.

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[16] K. C. Gupta, R. Garg, I. Bahl, and P. Bhartia, Microstrip and Slot Lines, Giulio Antonini (M’94) received the Laurea degree
2nd ed. Boston, MA: Artech House, 1996. (summa cum laude) from the University of L’Aquila,
[17] T. Weiland, “A discretization method for the solution of Maxwell’s L’Aquila, Italy, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree from
equations for six-component fields,” Electron. Commun., vol. 31, no. the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” in 1998, both
3, pp. 116–120, 1977. in electrical engineering.
[18] G. Antonini, J. Drewniak, and A. Orlandi, “Full-wave modeling of via Since 1998, he has been with the UAq EMC Lab-
holes and equivalent circuit extraction for signal integrity analysis,” pre- oratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Uni-
sented at the Proc. Europe 2002 Int. Symp. Electromagnetic Compati- versity of L’Aquila, where he is a tenured Assistant
bility, Sorrento, Italy, Sept. 9–13, 2002. Professor. His research interests focus on electromag-
[19] MICROWAVE STUDIO User Manual Version 3.0, CST GmbH, Darm- netic compatibility (EMC) analysis, numerical mod-
stadt, Germany, Jan. 2001. eling, and signal integrity for high-speed digital sys-
tems. Since 1998, he collaborates with the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center,
Yorktown Heights, New York, in the developments of algorithms for PEEC
modeling.
Dr. Antonini received the Best Transactions Paper Award, in 1998 for a paper
published in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY
in 1997. He is a member of the IEEE EMC TC-9 Committee.