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Technology
Backplane Routing Topology for Gigabit Copper and Fiber Networks
Backplanes are the backbone of modular computing platforms, providing a fabric that interlinks pluggable daughtercards in a single system. The design of backplanes must support interfaces on the daughtercards, often at high data rates reaching multiple Gbps. Some standards also specify system design requirements that support RF or fiber integration into these systems. The RF and fiber portion is normally integrated through a specialized connector
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Embedded Optical Interconnects in PCBs for Ultra High Speed Design
Most PCB designers—except those that work on optical transceivers—are probably not aware of the coming revolution in silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs), electronic-photonic integrated circuits (EPICs), and greater proliferation of embedded optical systems outside of telecom. Applications outside of telecom (for example, military and aerospace systems) that require massive data transfer rates already make use of fiber optics for embedded
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Silicon Photonics Integration Challenges in PCB Design
Silicon photonics will use the same manufacturing processes used in silicon ICs I was honored to meet Richard Soref at a recent IEEE conference and discuss the current state of electronic-photonic integrated circuits (EPICs). The man is often called “the Father of Silicon Photonics”, and for good reason. If you ask him nicely, he’ll tell you how to build all the fundamental logic gates as photonic circuits directly on silicon. Now is a landmark
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Agile Embedded Software Development: The Best of Both Worlds
You might want to use agile development to build this embedded system As unique hardware platforms that provide computing power in a variety of applications, embedded systems combine the best of every techie’s dreams: hardware design and software development. Design processes for simpler embedded systems tend to be linear, and the hardware and embedded software may even be developed in parallel by different design teams. As systems become more
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Integrate Your ECAD Tools with Mechanical Design Software
Communication between ECAD and MCAD teams can be like a game of telephone Ever play a game of telephone as a child? Once the message gets back to the sender, successive miscommunication along the way causes the original message and idea to be completely modified. This is the same thing that happens when mechanical and electrical design teams are siloed into different groups. Collaboration breaks down and communication becomes difficult. The
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ECAD/MCAD Co-design for PCB Manufacturing with 3D Printing
It is ironic that PCB design has helped drive the adoption of new technology in all industries, including manufacturing automation, yet PCB manufacturing processes themselves have not seen radical innovation for many decades. Some innovative companies are looking to change this and are driving PCB manufacturing into Industry 4.0. 3D printing is already driving new manufacturing methodologies in every industry, such as “lights out” and digital
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In-House Manufacturing for Electronics Projects
The news media like to embellish the advances and proliferation of affordable 3D printers, sometimes calling them ‘a factory in your home’. While this concept of being able to avoid buying products at a store and building them at home sounds ideal, I personally don’t believe we’re anywhere near it being a reality. I purchased my first 3D Printer in 2012, built my first CNC router in 2007 and purchased my first CO2 laser cutter in 2014, so I have
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How to Layout a Phase-locked Loop IC in Your RF PCB
As part of telecom systems, radio systems, and other RF devices requiring frequency synthesis, phase-locked loops play an important role in PCB design. High frequency transceivers and high speed digital devices contain integrated phase locked loops alongside an integrated VCO layout, which provides stable and internally controllable clock signals. However, some PLL ICs are available as discrete ICs, which will include an integrated VCO layout
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Why and How to Use an Aluminum PCB Substrate for Your Next Stackup Design
Aluminum can be used for more than just soda cans I don’t drink soda so much anymore now that I’m in my thirties, but I know aluminum has plenty of uses outside of making coke cans. One use is in the core of your PCB as a material for thermal management. Aluminum has high thermal conductivity and can be used to carry heat away from active components on a PCB when other passive or active cooling measures cannot bring component temperatures to a
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Decoupling Capacitor Calculations: What Size Should You Use For Digital ICs?
Are these decoupling capacitors sized properly? Something that comes up repeatedly in PCB design guidelines, including high-speed digital design "gurus", is the need to find the proper decoupling capacitor size. This is sometimes addressed without a full understanding of what these caps are supposed to do in a PDN or their role in ensuring power integrity. I've also seen many application notes that default to the decades-old guideline of placing
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Ethernet Layout Routing Guidelines and Standards: MAC, PHY, and RJ-45 Connectors
Magnetics termination has little to do with actual magnets. Here are some important ethernet layout routing guidelines to ensure signal integrity.
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5G Antenna Tuning in Mobile and IoT Devices
5G antenna tuning is like tuning a guitar as you play Guitar players know all about tuning their instruments. Whether swinging a whammy bar on stage or just ensuring each string hits the right note, this tuning changes that the resonant frequencies of each to the tone desired by the musician. To continue the recent series of articles on PCB design for 5G systems, one other aspect of designing RF design for 5G-capable wireless systems involves a
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Designing Your Circuit Board for Boundary Scan PCB Testing
You can avoid some manual circuit tests with a boundary scan test On simple boards with few components and surface-level traces, you can probably test all aspects of your board by hand without much difficulty. Imagine you needed to do this with a multilayer PCB, and you’ll see that there are many aspects of a manufactured and assembled board that cannot be tested by hand. With more advanced boards, where traces are embedded in the interior layers
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Long Range WiFi for Remote Sensors and Connectivity
If you need to have network access from sensors which need more than a little bandwidth, cellular can get quite expensive. There are quite a few long-range wireless systems that are targeted towards sensors, however, trade bandwidth for range. If you need to stream video, send pictures, or have a constant stream of data from a range of sensors these wireless links might not be suitable. WiFi has rather limited range by comparison but does have
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PCB FR-4 Materials Are Not All The Same
In the PCB industry, “FR-4”.is a common designation for laminate materials. To a certain extent, FR-4 as a specific type of laminate is one of the many myths promulgated throughout the industry. This blog will address the history the term FR-4, what it really means, the various quantifiers associated with it, and the characteristic issues of concern when selecting design-specific laminates. The Origins of FR-4 If you research FR-4 as a term
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IPv6 and the Internet of Things
For a while now we’ve been told that IPv4 addresses (you know, the network addresses that look like 192.168.1.1) are running out. and, approximately three decades from now, there aren’t going to be enough of them left to go around. While we have reached the point of IPv4 being fully allocated at a high level, it's still easy to buy or lease IP addresses in any region, and ISPs are not turning down new customers because they cannot allocate them
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Passive Intermodulation in PCBs for 5G Systems
5G networks are coming. Are your PCBs ready? Anyone pays attention to the top bar on their phone has noticed the 4G indicator. If you use a major wireless carrier in the U.S., you’ll likely see 5G in the top bar once you buy your next smartphone. 5G systems designers, especially PCB designers, will need to work with higher frequencies, faster data rates, lower power budgets, and plenty of other performance requirements. Nonlinearity will also
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