2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Signal integrity (SI) has become as one of the vital areas for the development of modern hardware systems that require working with digital signals at very high speeds. As it is also known, the federal government has budgeted about $280 billion in new funding for domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors through the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) act. These new semiconductor chips are tightly packed with signal interconnects densely integrated in small spaces where there exist several coupling mechanisms leading to signal integrity problems. Furthermore, signal integrity requires the synergy of electrical and mechanical engineering, physics and another associated disciplines. However, nationally, there is still a need for engineers and scientists with SI skills. For example, it has been pointed out that: “The gap between the demand in the industry and the supply of engineers with signal integrity design skills is widening.” Additionally, the XX metropolitan area is known as having one of the highest concentrations of connector companies, where SI knowledge is needed.

In a previous paper, we reported that one of the problems with valuable signal integrity educational experiences is the specialized and costly equipment and software that are needed. For example, high-speed sampling oscilloscopes, bit error rate testers and up-to-date precision network analyzers, are very expensive and beyond the standard laboratory equipment in an undergraduate program. In this paper, we report the efforts that we have made to keep our signal integrity laboratory current and the new laboratory experiences, as well as capstone projects and undergraduate research, that we have supervised. For example, some projects have been How to Conduct a 4-port Mechanical Calibration on a 67 GHz vector network analyzer, Using Advanced Design System for a Detailed Examination of the Worst-case Impact of Vias on the Signal Integrity of a Signal when Traversing a Printed Circuit Board with 5 and 9 Layers and Obtaining Dielectric Characteristics of a Material Using the Free Space Measurement Method. In addition, we supervised a capstone project of Electromagnetic Compatibility and Electromagnetic Interference Evaluation Board, which was sponsored by an industry partner and is currently in use at the sponsor’s facility. Recently, we have obtained support from the Office Naval Research to acquire new equipment to continue our enhancement of our undergraduate/graduate education and research in the signal integrity field.

Furthermore, we can proudly state that we have graduated over sixty students who have taken a course on signal integrity or have done internships in the signal integrity laboratory and are now working in the SI field worldwide. Furthermore, students highly rated the course (6/7) and provided comments such as “Lectures and hands-on during labs. The use of many SI equipment and simulation tools plays a big part on understanding the materials.” We are also planning to contribute to the CHIPS act by partnering with our sister campus that obtained CHIPS funding and develop a skilled and diverse pipeline of workers for the national semiconductor industry and its associated industries, such as connectors and PCB manufacturing.

The Authors thank the Office of Naval Research, Award #: xxxx, for their support.