Modeling and analysis of TSV noise coupling effects on active circuits and shielding structures in 2.5D/3D IC

Abstract

We proposed TSV to active circuit noise coupling model based on 3-dimensional transmission line matrix method (3D-TLM) and analyzed the noise coupling paths and the noise coupling effects on the active circuit with the proposed models. With the suggested model, the noise coupling effects from the five coupling paths were compared and analyzed. Moreover, the most critical noise coupling path was determined. We verified the accuracy of the proposed model with 3D EM simulation results. Additionally, we proposed shielding structures using a guard-ring and the ground TSVs for suppression of the noise coupling in 3D IC. The proposed noise suppression methods can reduce the TSV noise by blocking the noise paths to the active circuit. The noise coupling and suppression mechanisms were analyzed with voltage transfer functions in frequency-domain using our proposed model. Various shielding structures were evaluated by comparing the different phase noise of LC-VCO to analyze the shielding effectiveness.