Process Variation in Spoof Plasmon Interconnect: Consequences and Compensations

Abstract

The concept of chip-to-chip information propagation by spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP) meta-surface at terahertz frequency has been introduced of late, that promises data transfer with high bandwidth, low crosstalk, and low energy consumption. As the exotic electromagnetic properties of the metasurface derive from its designed geometric pattern and periodicity, any possible variation of fabrication process parameters may affect the design pattern and consequently the information capacity of SSPP interconnects. In this work, we have investigated the extent of performance degradation of SSPP interconnect with the statistical variation of geometric pattern of the metasurface. We also described the technique of the design of appropriate analog circuit so that the loss of signal integrity incurred by the process variation can be recuperated in real time.