Avoid Common Pad and Via Problems in Your Last-Minute PCB DFM Check You’ll want to examine your pads and vias for these components during a DFM check There are times where you’ll need to make last minute changes to your board before you send it off to a manufacturer. Similarly, you may need to modify an existing design before sending it off for manufacturing, which may require swapping components as well as slightly rearranging traces and other components. This can occur due to unavailable components or simple Read Article RF Signal Chain Design for FMCW Chirped Radar Systems If you could hear the output from your chirped radar system, it might sound like a brahminy starling In automotive and UAV radar applications, radar signals are amplified throughout the signal chain. Amplification is critical for ensuring the reflected signal can be accurately detected and for maximizing the range and resolution of your radar system. Although there are some ICs that integrate an entire signal chain into a single package, these Read Article RF Power Amplifier Impedance Matching at Microwave and mmWave Frequencies According to MarketWatch, the overall market for RF amplifiers is expected to surpass $27 billion by 2023. So where are all of these RF amplifiers expected to be used? You can thank 5G and the expansion of cellular networks in general for a healthy portion of the expected growth. For the PCB designers out there, RF amplifier impedance matching becomes an important design point, especially with high power amplifiers. Large-signal RF Amplifier Read Article Cooling Fan Electrical Noise Reduction in Your PCB Who hasn’t opened up their PC or laptop and taken a long look at its fans and heatsinks? If you’re working with high speed components, high frequency components, or power components, then you’ll need to devise some sort of cooling strategy to remove heat from these components. Unless you want to use the nuclear option and install an evaporative cooling unit or build a water cooling system, you’ll get the best results with the smallest form factor Read Article Happy Holden the Father of HDI PCBs Happy Holden, father of High-Density Interconnect, discusses his career at HP, his work with AI, and delivers cost-effective insights on multi-layers and miniaturization. Read Article Set Up a Low Power Rugged Network Attached Storage Server Building an Internet-of-Things device, or perhaps recording continuous video, requires a low-power, high capacity storage system, preferably utilizing inexpensive hardware. In specific cases, your device might be remote or might deal with high vibration intensities, like being mounted on a piece of industrial equipment, on a robot, or in a vehicle. Such circumstances make solid-state storage indispensable. Raspberry Pi? I started out looking at Read Article Will All Thin Materials Flex? Telling “war stories” about flexible circuit designs is something that can provide endless hours of entertainment when you get a bunch of “geeky” PCB people together. In fact, it seems that the best of these stories have all caused countless hours of frustration while in the midst of them, but once that frustration eases, we seem to be able to find both a little (or a lot of) humor in the situation and clarity on the lesson learned. Today, I am Read Article Designing For The Mil-aero Electronics Market—aircraft In designing PCBs that are used for aircraft delivered to the mil-aero market, there are some similarities to other products within the broader military market sector. Satisfying performance metrics relative to shock, temperature, corrosion, long-term product suppor,t and the ability to adhere to outdated standards and specifications can be challenging in this vertical market space. This article will address these factors and what is necessary to Read Article PCB Design and Outer Layer Surface Finishes Although it might seem to be very downstream in terms of overall product development considerations, determining which PCB outer layer surface finish is the correct one is something that needs to be addressed at the forefront of the PCB design process. There are a variety of outer layer surface finishes available with both advantages and disadvantages to nearly each one. Which one is best suited to your particular design is highly dependent on Read Article The Impact Of Glass Weave Styles On Blind Vias And Differential Skew In recent years, whenever we have talked about glass weave styles, the conversation has surrounded the effect those styles have on differential skew. But weave styles and their impact on PCB designs actually have their roots in blind vias. Both blind vias and skew can be compensated for through the mechanical spreading of the various glass weave styles. This article will discuss both elements, the ways in which they can be addressed and the Read Article Designing For The Mil-aero Market—ground Equipment When it comes to designing products for the Army and Marine branches of the military, a lot of the focus is on ground equipment—armored personnel carriers, tanks, Humvees, rocket launchers and artillery pieces. For the Marines, there is also amphibious equipment. On the smaller product implementation side there are radios for both Navy and Marine applications along with the appurtenant communication satellites required for keeping everything Read Article Generating Outputs for Assemblers I was asked recently by a relatively new engineer what files I send to an assembler to make sure they do not encounter problems, and what would reduce the number of clarification questions they ask about the design. That engineer had been working professionally for several years with a large company, and had never had the responsibility of generating outputs or even seen the outputs from the products he was working on, so his only experience was Read Article Dimensioned PCB Drawings for Assemblers In my previous article, Generating Outputs for Assemblers, we generated a fantastic assembly drawing for an assembler or contract manufacturer to visually determine component placement positions. However, there are times you may wish to provide drawings that impart additional clarity to your assembler in order to ease the setup of machines or other processes—this typically involves panelization dimensions or fiducial positions on the panel. In Read Article Get Inspired by Major League Hacking with Jonathan Gottfried Jonathan Gottfried, Developer Evangelist at Twilio Inc., talks ‘Major League Hacking’ on the Altium Ontrack Podcast. Learn how MLH is influencing the next generation of engineers the world over. Read Article Getting Started with Your First Electronics Projects in Upverter (previously Geppeto) Sofftware Upverter (previously known as Geppetto) is an online platform that allows anybody with access to a modern browser to develop their newest development board and move on to low volume manufacturing. One of the challenges in launching your product, especially hardware products, is that it requires an array of skill sets and some reasonable level of experience. Upverter gives designers and start ups that are transitioning into their growth phase a Read Article Come See Microchip at AltiumLive 2019 in San Diego! We here at Microchip are excited to contribute to the presentation lineup at AltiumLive 2019 in San Diego. Join us this year to hear our very own Bob Martin’s keynote presentation covering prototyping using the Arduino platform, and Pete Wilson’s technical session on wireless design using RF modules. Here’s a summary of what you’ll learn from Microchip this year: In this keynote, Microchip's resident Wizard of Make, Bob Martin, will show us how Read Article Designing For The Mil-aero Market—Satellites Similar to the products developed for naval applications, satellites are subject to specific environmental conditions that must be addressed during the product development cycle. From Radhardened ICs to heat pipes and an extreme emphasis on reliability, PCBs designed for use in satellites are subjected to extraordinary operational issues. This article will describe the challenges associated with designing PCBs used in satellites and the Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page99 Current page100 Page101 Page102 Page103 Page104 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More
