High-speed computer design focus today is on increasing the data transfer speeds between different components on a printed circuit board (PCB). There is an all time high demand these days on the reduction in size of computers. Both these issues combine to cause many new problems to signal integrity design. One such common signal integrity problem is non ideal return path, which causes reflections and degradation of the signal quality at the receiver.

In the first part of the thesis, we will model a transmission line stack up coupled to a driver and receiver and compare the effect of the non-ideal return path in Advanced Design System environment. We will try to compare the laboratory signal degradation measurements with the simulated data and construct an eye diagram, which is one of the most intuitive methods to view high speed digital communication waveforms for different cases of a part of computer PCB.

In the next part we are going to do a crosstalk analysis by constructing multilayer capacitor and inductor and optimizing them to get higher Q-value for each component. Crosstalk is another important issue in signal integrity design, which is the coupling of energy between two nearby lines. We shall then perform the differential scattering parameter analysis for two capacitors in various orientations with respect to each other and similarly for inductor and capacitor in different orientations.