Adviser:

As operating frequencies and signal speeds continue to increase in modern devices, the effects of packages and interconnects on the overall signal integrity become increasingly important. The complex electromagnetic behaviors of these often complicated structures must be characterized in order to take their effects into account. Broadband macromodeling deals with the generation of network models of these devices in order to accurately predict their behaviors in circuit simulators. This often involves the generation of passive rational function representations of the system from the measured port responses. In this thesis, we will employ the vector fitting algorithm to generate a rational function representation of the system along with its state space model. Various issues on the subject will be discussed, including the recently developed fast fitting method for multiport devices. Passivity of the model, which is one of the most prominent issues on the subject, will be addressed. A robust algorithm, via residue perturbation, to enforce passivity in nonpassive models will be presented. Finally