Benjamin Dannan

Jan 21, 2025 | signalintegrityjournal.com | Heidi Barnes |Steve Sandler |Benjamin Dannan

Hardware engineers are learning the hard way that power integrity (PI) requires electromagnetic (EM) simulation of the printed circuit board (PCB) power delivery network (PDN). Traditional rules-of-thumb and leveraging data sheet examples are not an option as designs move from hundreds of Amps (A) to thousands. 1000 A across a 100 microhm (µΩ) PCB PDN is still 100 millivolts (mV) of IR drop and 100 Watts (W) of power dissipating as heat.

Aug 1, 2024 | signalintegrityjournal.com | Steve Sandler |Benjamin Dannan |Heidi Barnes |Idan Ben Ezra

Designing a power distribution network (PDN) for a scalable 2000 Amp power supply presents numerous challenges. This paper will address these challenges while demonstrating how to design, simulate, and validate a scalable core power rail with a current of 2000 Amp. The most common architectures for high-current power rails utilize a 48 VDC input to reduce the current to a more manageable level.

Apr 25, 2024 | allaboutcircuits.com | Benjamin Dannan |Duane Benson

The Picotest P2105A and P2104A probes, when used with the Rohde & Schwarz ZPR20 power rail probe, provide the best low-noise measurement solution for the MXO 5. These single-ended 50Ω browser probes provide similar performance to having a direct measurement coax connection from your oscilloscope to your device under test (DUT). When acquiring a signal and making a low-noise measurement, we traditionally only consider the oscilloscope's features, including the bandwidth and dynamic range.

Apr 23, 2024 | signalintegrityjournal.com | Will McCaffrey |Northrop Grumman |Tyler Huddleston |Benjamin Dannan

The design and performance of power distribution networks (PDNs) in modern printed circuit board (PCB) assemblies and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are paramount for ensuring a stable and clean voltage to the load.1 To achieve this, accurate modeling of all elements of the PDN is essential.2 One often overlooked element is an accurate representation of the capacitors that filter voltage ripple at the load and provide a matched impedance from the source to the load.

Jan 23, 2024 | signalintegrityjournal.com | Benjamin Dannan |Steve Sandler

Continuing our discussion from the last two blogs, we discussed how much CMRR is required to make this measurement, and we demonstrated this measurement with a Bode 100 VNA. To recap, before making a 40 µΩ measurement, we had to create our DUT.  Figure 1 depicts the DUT that was created to support this low-impedance measurement with the 2-port probe. However, when this DUT was made, it was not known precisely what the impedance of the copper on this PCB mount was.