hello Hany, Want to provide a note of caution concerning the application of "planar" EM simulators in the manner you mentioned. If, as you suggest, you define a layer as an infinite plane and mesh only the voids in that plane for magnetic current flow then you may not be simulating the design you intend. This is especially the case for broadband Power Integrity analysis with more than one plane. Such planes are infinite and therefore have an infinite capacitance between them at DC. This implies a virtual DC connection amongst all planes - think of it as a DC global ground. To see the effects of infinite planes you can build a simple design with 4-layer stackup; microstrip on top/bottom with two infinite planes between. On the top and bottom define a length of microstrip feedline with a port on one end and the other end connecting to a via that goes from the top to bottom layer thought the two planes. Assure you define an antipad in each plane that are meshed with resulting magnetic current flow in them. Simulate from a low frequency to a high frequency. You will find at DC there is connectivity between the top and bottom (i.e. mag(S11)=mag(S22)=0, mag(S21)=1 at DC). This is likely not your intent. A real circuit does not have infinite extent therefore you only have finite capacitance at DC and you should observe a series capacitance at low frequency for this 2-port circuit with mag(s11)=MAG(s22)=1, MAG(s21)=0 at DC. The infinite plane result is not "wrong": it is a correct solution to the infinite plane design you defined. The potential issue is that you may not be defining the design you really wish to model. You can view the above simple example (as a circuit simulator does) as a thru via with relatively small localized inductive and capacitive parasitics, but you must augment this view the plane capacitance as a series element in the return path. Infinite planes have an infinite DC capacitance and yield a thru connection at DC. A finite sized circuit has only finite capacitance and yields an open at DC. I believe John Dunn from AWR covered this point briefly in this forum last year at DesignCon concerning "ground" for EM analysis. If you don't have the time to setup the planar EM analysis or peruse John's workshop materials I may be able to find and share with you offline the slides I shared with John for his forum last year. If you are doing SI/PI analyses with planar EM simulators you must keep this subtle issue in mind. Else you may be solving a different design than what you intended. The simple workaround is to not use magnetic currents (infinite planes). Of course, for some RF/microwave circuits the infinite plane approximation is perfectly reasonable and saves a lot of simulation time that would be required to mesh all [finite] planes. Momentum is a fine tool, as are the many other planar EM simulators available. I am somewhat biased, since I helped create Momentum many yeas ago :-) cheers, -Brad Brim (Sigrity) > -----Original Message----- > From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hany Fahmy > Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 10:38 AM > To: Istvan Nagy; Carrier, Patrick; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: 2D vs 3D EM based signal integrity simulators > > I used a lot Momentum ( a part of Agilent-ADS) tool to > accurately model the impact of layer-changes along with > stitching-vias impact and the proximity of these vias to > signal transitions. > > Momentum is a full-wave technique that depends on > discretizing the metals with surface electric currents, also > the voids with magnetic currents and solve for these > currents, therefore, it can capture the impact of signal > transitions along with the impact of gnd-stitching and the > proximity of it. > > Hany Fahmy (Nvidia Corporation) ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List technical documents are available at: http://www.si-list.net List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu