Optimal terminations for crosstalk mitigation of high-speed interconnects with discontinuities using modal signaling

In high-speed chip-to-chip single-ended signaling links, far-end crosstalk presents one of the dominant noise sources, limiting the link performance. Diagonalizing the channel using modal decomposition has been proposed to mitigate the crosstalk. However, special attention needs to be devoted to the frequency dependence of optimal modal matching terminations used in modal signaling. In this paper, application of modal decomposition to a typical memory bus with discontinuities is presented. The properties of the modes are closely studied to construct the frequency-dependent optimum terminations, which are then synthesized using low-order passive RLC networks. The proposed approach is verified using statistical link simulation.