Design Criteria of Automatic Fixture Removal (AFR)
for Asymmetric Fixture De-embedding
Changwook Yoon, Mikheil Tsiklauri, Mikhail
Zvonkin, Jun Fan, James L. Drewniak
EMC Laboratory
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Rolla, MO 65401, US
yooncha@mst.edu
Alexander Razmadze, Aman Aflaki
Altera Corporation
San Jose, CA 95134, USA
Jingook Kim
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Ulsan, South Korea
Qinghua Bill Chen
Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University
Jiaxing, China
School of Software and Microelectronics, Peking
University
Beijing, China
Abstract— Automatic fixture removal (AFR) for asymmetric
fixture de-embedding is introduced. Two design criteria for
fixture design in AFR, passivity and discontinuity, are proposed.
Three different 2x-fixtures are investigated for the verification of
proposed two design criteria.
Keywords— automatic fixture removal (AFR), design criteria,
de-embedding
I. INTRODUCTION
As a data-rate on a single-ended or differential channel
increases and allowable jitter level decreases, an allowable
jitter level has been decreasing. Most of measured jitter comes
from the undesired fixture on PCB/package. Therefore, de-
embedding of undesired fixture has been becoming
increasingly important to know the pure jitter level at I/O
buffer. An accurate characterization along with undesired
fixture is an important work in modern multi-gigabit digital
channel.
In general, the fixture inevitably includes lots of unexpected
discontinuity elements such as ball-pad, via, cable and
connector. Thu, many previous researches regarding fixture
characterization have been reported. The equivalent lumped
model based on 3D geometry is widely and traditionally used
method.[1][2][3] However, 3D simulation takes long time and
results are different depending on solving algorithms.[4][5][6]
On the contrary, general calibration methods through network
analyzer is another ways to characterize the fixture.[7][8]
However, this approach has strong confidence only if all
parasitic at the termination is well known.
In order to characterize the asymmetric fixture with a high
accuracy, automatic fixture removal (AFR) using symmetric
2x-fixture consisting of the asymmetric 1x-fixtures has been
currently popular.[9][10][11][12][13] AFR basically is
suitable for reciprocal and passive fixture. Since 2x-fixture is
always symmetric and has same mount types at both ends, the
measured S-parameter can be easily obtained through a
conventional calibration standard. However, S-parameter for
the asymmetric fixture has no reference data to check its
accuracy. All previously reports only focus on applying AFR
algorithm to their fixtures and calculating S-parameter of 1x-
fixture without any verification procedure.
This paper introduces a basic AFR theory about how to
calculate S-parameter of asymmetry 1x-fixture. AFR method
basically needs the symmetry 2x-fixture and its time domain
reflectometric (TDR) waveform. However, the result of
asymmetry 1x-fixture is very sensitive to a difference in the
design of symmetry 2x-fixture. If a very small error occurs,
this small error eventually brings a large error after de-
embedding. Thus, this paper proposes two design criteria for
the design of 2x-fixture for AFR application and shows that
results are very different depending on design criteria. In order
to validate proposed two design criteria in AFR, three
asymmetric fixtures are designed under different conditions.
II. AUTOMATIC FIXTURE REMOVAL
Asymmetric 1x-fixture is characterized through a
relationship between S-parameters and time-domain
reflectometer (TDR) waveform.
A. 2x-Fixture Design
In order to apply AFR algorithm, 2x-fixture consisting of
1x-fixtures is necessary as shown in Fig. 1. If 1x-fixture is
passive and reciprocal, two insertion losses of 1x-fixture are
same [S
21
1x
= S
12
1x
] but return losses are different [S
11
1x
≠S
22
1x
]
respectively. Therefore, The right 1x-fixture has flipped
component at the diagonal line in S-parameter. After
cascading both 1x-fixtures, 2x-fixture naturally has a
symmetric structure and same insertion loss and return loss
along with diagonal line [S
11
2x
= S
22
2x
, S
21
2x
= S
12
2x
].
978-1-4799-5545-9/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 654