A Multiple Half-Pitch-Shift Compensation Method for Robust Fiber Weave Effect Mitigation

As data rates rise, the fiber weave effect (FWE) has become a critical source of signal integrity degradation in high-speed printed circuit boards (PCBs). Presently, there is still no effective and practical method for FWE mitigation. In this letter, a novel half-pitch-shift (HPS) compensation method is proposed for high-performance FWE suppression with low cost. A number of traces are designed, fabricated, and measured for robust verification. The measured results show that the proposed method reduces the average time skew of stripline differential pairs with a length of 260 mm from 19.31 to 1.16 ps, 93.99% reduction. To the author’s best knowledge, this method has overwhelming superiority over other methods in terms of robustness, mitigation, and cost. It is the most practical and applicable solution for low-cost FWE mitigation currently.