Bus Planning to minimize Crosstalk for high frequency design

Crosstalk in on-chip interconnects is a critical concern in modern digital systems, where aggressive scaling and dense routing aggravate capacitive coupling effects. These interactions can lead to signal integrity degradation and timing violations, particularly when adjacent wires switch in opposite directions. While traditional mitigation techniques such as shielding and spacing are effective, they often incur significant area and routing overhead. This thesis investigates an alternative approach based on encoding-decoding strategies that structurally prevent harmful switching patterns by transforming data into codewords optimized for crosstalk minimization. Several encoder configurations were proposed, including 3-to-4, 5-to-7, and 7-to-10 mappings, each applied to a full 32-bit bus implementation test case. These designs were developed in SystemVerilog and synthesized through a complete RTL-to-GDSII flow, enabling detailed evaluation of Power, Performance, and Area (PPA). A multi-layered verification framework was implemented to ensure functional correctness and enforce the fundamental rule that adjacent wires must not switch in opposite directions. This included exhaustive input testing, coverage-driven analysis, and dynamic transition validation. To quantify the physical impact of the encoding schemes, a novel simulation methodology was introduced, analyzing delay variations across different representative transitions using controlled wire state manipulation. The results confirmed that the proposed encoders effectively eliminate crosstalk-induced delay and, in ideal cases, benefit from constructive coupling, which can improve setup time margins. Additionally, Error Correction Code (ECC) logic was integrated into selected implementations to explore fault tolerance trade-offs. While ECC introduces additional switching activity, reintroducing crosstalk delay, it may be advantageous in reliability-critical applications. The analysis highlights that the decision to include ECC must be guided by system-level constraints, balancing robustness against physical efficiency. Overall, this work presents a scalable and physically-aware framework for reliable high-speed data transmission, offering a tunable balance between wire count, timing robustness, and fault tolerance through encoding-based crosstalk mitigation.