Patent ID: 7477069

Claim:
A method for transmitting through an interconnection with n transmission conductors and a reference conductor, n being an integer greater than or equal to 2, the method providing, in a known frequency band, m transmission channels each corresponding to a signal to be sent from the input of at least one transmitting circuit to the output of at least one receiving circuit, where m is an integer greater than or equal to 2 and less than or equal to n, the method comprising the steps of: modeling the interconnection, taking into account the lumped impedances seen by the interconnection and caused by the circuits connected to the interconnection elsewhere than at the ends of the interconnection, as a multiconductor transmission line having uniform electrical characteristics over its length for the known frequency band; determining, for the multiconductor transmission line and the known frequency band, the characteristic impedance matrix and a transition matrix from modal electrical variables to natural electrical variables; placing at at least one end of the interconnection, a termination circuit having an impedance matrix approximating the characteristic impedance matrix; combining the m input signals in one of the transmitting circuits, according to linear combinations defined by the transition matrix from modal electrical variables to natural electrical variables, using a digital processing and a conversion of the digital signals produced by the digital processing into n analog signals, so as to obtain at the output of said one of the transmitting circuits, output being connected to the n transmission conductors, the generation of modal electrical variables, each being proportional to a single signal among the input signals; and combining in one of the receiving circuits, the input of which is connected to the n transmission conductors, the analog signals present on the transmission conductors, according to linear combinations defined by the inverse of the transition matrix from modal electrical variables to natural electrical variables, using a conversion of the n analog signals into digital signals and a digital processing of the digital signals produced by the conversion, so as to obtain at the output of said one of the receiving circuits m output signals each corresponding to one of the transmission channels, each output signal being proportional to a single modal electrical variable among the modal electrical variables.