A staggered transmission scheme for mitigating electromagnetic interference levels radiated by high-speed digital systems

Abstract

This work presents a staggered transmission scheme for high-speed digital signals in multiconductor systems, which reduces radiated emissions in printed circuit boards. The scheme is based on stopping the data transmission in each line at fixed time intervals. Cuts in the transmission are performed by decomposing the binary information in coded blocks where every block has a staggered form. The repeated combination of these coded blocks is used to convey all the information. The principle of the transmission cuts is to decrease the current transitions along the lines which are responsible for the electromagnetic radiation. In order to validate the approach for one line, measurements were performed. For validating the reduction of the interference levels in more lines, simulations in a multiconductor system of five microstrips were performed. Results show that this transmission approach is suitable when trying to reduce intra-platform interference problems due to high-speed signaling on the interconnections.