A Comparison between Radiation and Ohmic Losses in Highly-conducting Interconnects for High-speed Applications

This paper deals with the problem of estimating the losses in highly-conducting wires, in a frequency range where the transverse dimension is comparable to the signal wavelength. In this case the standard transmission line model fails since it cannot predict high-frequency effects like radiation in the transverse plane. Here we use a recently proposed enhanced transmission line model which, although it is simple as the standard one, can take into account properly these effects. This model is obtained starting from a full-wave analysis of the propagation along perfectly conducting wires, and using an integral formulation based on the electromagnetic potentials. This model is here upgraded in order to take into account the effect of an high but finite wire conductivity. By means of the modified model, we compare the ohmic losses in the wires to the radiation losses in cases of practical interest.