US 2004/0165669 A1Published application

Signal transmission apparatus and interconnection structure

AssigneesKanji Otsuka, Tamotsu Usami, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha, Sony Corporation, Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba, NEC Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Renesas Technology Corp., Rohm Co., Ltd.

InventorsKanji Otsuka, Tamotsu Usami

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

patentgrep

Loading patent…

Abstract

Apparatus for transmitting a digital signal within, for example, an integrated circuit includes a signal transmission line with a directional coupler at one or both ends. The directional coupler blocks the direct-current component of the digital signal while transmitting the alternating-current component, including enough higher harmonics to transmit a well-defined pulse waveform. A suitable directional coupler consists of two adjacent line pairs in materials with different dielectric constants. The apparatus may also include a driver of the inverter type, a receiver of the differential amplifier type, a terminating resistor, and a power-ground transmission line pair for supplying power to the driver. An all-metallic transmission-line structure is preferably maintained from the output interconnections in the driver to the input interconnections in the receiver.

Claims30

Dependent claims

A signal transmission apparatus, comprising:

a signal transmission line having a transmitting end, a receiving end, and a characteristic impedance, including a signal-line element having a resistance-capacitance delay, for transmitting a digital signal input at the transmitting end;
a first driver having an inverter structure and an on-resistance, for supplying the digital signal to the transmitting end of the signal transmission line;
a power-ground transmission line pair for supplying power to the first driver, having a characteristic impedance low enough to drive a sum of the on-resistance of the first driver and the characteristic impedance of the signal transmission line;
a first receiver having a differential amplifier structure, for receiving the digital signal from the receiving end of the signal transmission line and detecting the received digital signal;
and
a first directional coupler connected between the first driver and the transmitting end of the signal transmission line, or between the receiving end of the signal transmission line and the first receiver, for blocking a direct-current component of the digital signal and passing a wideband alternating-current component of the digital signal.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.