What is a PCB transmission line?

This is an article that was originally published on the Sierra Circuits blog.

Given its success, I thought it might be useful to share it here as well with LinkedIn's PCB designers and engineers community.

A PCB transmission line is a type of interconnection used for moving signals from their transmitters to their receivers on a printed circuit board. A PCB transmission line is composed of two conductors: a signal trace and a return path, which is usually a ground plane. The volume between the two conductors is made up of the PCB dielectric material.

The alternating current that runs on a transmission line has a frequency high enough to take its wave nature into account. It means that at high frequencies, transmission lines need to have a controlled impedance to predict the behavior of the signals.

It is crucial to not ignore the transmission line effects in order to avoid signal reflections, crosstalk, electromagnetic noise and other issues which could severely impact the signal quality and cause errors.

Transmission line examples

There are usually two basic types of signal transmission line interconnects used in PCBs: microstrips and striplines. There is a third type – coplanar without a reference plane but it is not very common in use.

A microstrip is a single uniform trace – which is a conductor – located on the outer layer of a PCB, and parallel to a conducting ground plane, which usually provides the return path for signals traveling on this trace. The trace and the ground plane are separated by a certain height of PCB dielectric.

A stripline is composed of a uniform trace – which is also a conductor – located on the inner layer of a PCB. The trace is separated on each side by a parallel PCB dielectric layer and then a ground plane. So it has two return paths – reference plane 1 and reference plane 2.

Unless microstrips and striplines, a coplanar waveguide reunites both conductors – the trace and the ground plane – on one side of the PCB. The trace is usually at the center and is surrounded by the two adjacent outer ground planes; it is called “coplanar” because these three flat structures are on the same plane. The PCB dielectric is located underneath.

It is essential to keep in mind that a PCB transmission line is composed of not only the signal trace but also the return path, which is usually an adjoining ground plane or a coplanar conductor, or a combination of both.

How to know when an interconnection is a transmission line

The set of electrical conductors (at least two conductors are required: one for the signal and the other one for the return path, which is usually a ground plane) used for connecting a signal between its source and its destination is called a transmission line (and not just an interconnection) if it is not possible to ignore the time it takes for the signal to travel from the source to the destination, as compared to the time period of one-fourth of the wavelength of the higher frequency component in the signal.

Two very important properties of a transmission line are its characteristic impedance and its propagation delay per unit length; and if the impedance is not controlled along its entire length, or the line is not terminated by the right value of impedance, signal reflections, crosstalk, electromagnetic noise, etc. will occur, and degradation in signal quality may be severe enough to create errors in information being transmitted and received.

When the signal frequencies (in case of analog signals) or the data transfer rates (in case of digital signals) are low (less than 50 MHz or 20 Mbps), the time it will take for a signal to travel from its source to its destination on a PCB would be very small (< 10%) compared to the time period of one-fourth of a wavelength or the fastest rise time of a digital pulse signal. In this case, it is possible to approximate the interconnect by assuming that the signal at the destination follows the signal at its source at the same time. In such a low-speed scenario, the PCB signal can be analyzed by conventional network analysis techniques and we can ignore any signal propagation time or transmission line reflections, etc.

However, when dealing with signals at higher frequencies or higher data transfer rates, the signal propagation time on PCB conductors between the source and the destination cannot be ignored in comparison to the time period of one-fourth of a wavelength or the fastest pulse rise time. Therefore, it is not possible to analyze the behavior of such high-speed signals on PCB interconnects using ordinary network analysis techniques. We need to consider the interconnects as transmission lines and analyze them accordingly. 

In a few weeks, I will talk about signal speed and propagation delay in a PCB transmission line, another topic widely appreciated by the PCB community. Stay tuned!