Surface Integral Equation Formulation for Inductance Extraction in 3-D Interconnects

A novel surface integral equation based algorithm is proposed for accurate inductance and resistance extraction in 3-D interconnects. The surface integral equation is obtained by using the skin-effect cross-sectional approximation of the volumetric current density in the traditional volumetric integral equation. The method allows for substantial reduction of computational complexity in the pertinent boundary-element formulation compared with widely adopted volumetric models. For a fixed number of samples per skin-depth establishing a desired accuracy of extraction, the number of degrees of freedom in the proposed discretized problem scales with frequency ¿ as O (¿¿), as opposed to O (¿) exhibited by the volumetric models. The accuracy of extraction is shown to be maintained from dc to the limit of magneto-quasistatic approximation.