Analyzing Impedance Discontinuities In A Printed Circuit Board

Analyzing impedance discontinuities in a printed circuit board, where the printed circuit board is made up of layers of dielectric substrate having signal traces and power planes disposed upon the layers of substrate, the signal traces include trace segments, and the printed circuit board described by a computer-aided design ('CAD'), including creating, by an impedance discontinuity analysis module from the CAD, a geometric description of each power plane, including representing each geometric description of each power plane as a set of non-overlapping rectangles; creating a geometric description of each signal trace, including projecting the signal traces of one side of a layer of dielectric substrate onto at least one signal plane on the other side of the same layer of substrate; and identifying at least one impedance discontinuity of a signal trace in dependence upon the geometric description of each signal trace and the geometric description of each power plane.