Polar Instruments' PCB transmission line field solvers can now cope with cross-hatched ground planes, around striplines, microstrip and embedded striplines.
"Flex and rigid flex designers and fabricators have long asked for additional field solver capability to enable modelling of PCB transmission lines with meshed or crosshatched ground return planes," said Polar CEO Martyn Gaudion. "XFE is an extension to the Polar Si8000m and Si9000e which enables modelling of lossless transmission lines with this type of return structure."
He added that it can also be employed where crosshatching is used to keep impedance-controlled line widths at practical geometries - on interposers, for example.
XFE employs the firm's proprietary multi-pass 2d boundary element field solving.
"Modelling from 10% to 100% copper returns on impedance tracks is now as simple to implement as traditional impedance controlled structures," claimed Polar. "The broader geometrical variations of flex base materials compared with rigid materials means it is even more important to model the correct design dimensions in order to reduce the amount of prototype turns needed to guarantee yields."