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Most people that have read anything about Albert Einstein have heard the word “causality” thrown around. Although causality is often talked about in terms of relativity and quantum mechanics, this idea is central in any dynamical system. PCB interconnects are causal systems, and accurately modeling a PCB interconnect requires considering specific aspects of signal behavior and the system’s response. If you can correctly model the causal behavior...

IoT products are lovely and sometimes frustrating products. Design teams need to be multifunctional to design these products successfully. They need to get the hardware, embedded software, web platform and/or app, and mechanical enclosure perfect if they want to see market success. Problems in any of these areas mean your new product will be substandard and, eventually, competitive products will win market share. So what does it take to ensure...

It feels like everyone is writing an article these days about how they’re managing (or not managing) with stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 restrictions. At the time of writing, California (where I am based) has the highest number of cases over any other state in the United States. To combat the pandemic, most non-essential businesses have been closed or open in a limited fashion. This means that folks who are able to work from home (e.g...

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Cross-hatching of PCB planes refers to a method wherein certain planes or other large areas of copper within a PCB appear as a latticework of copper. Regular openings are placed at regular intervals, much like those that appear in a screen door. The requirement for cross-hatching a plane is rare these days in rigid PCBs, but they are used in flex and rigid-flex implementations where they can provide a number of benefits. So when is it appropriate...

PCB fabricators can be as diverse as the products they manufacture. You can find anything from a company based in Asia that focuses on volume production of complex multi-layer boards for the main players in the telecom and datacom market sectors. A manufacturer based primarily here in the States is something rare, especially one that offers a broad range of expertise, products, and services for a wide variety of end applications. While similar in...

The terms “high-speed design” and “low-Dk PCB laminate” are often used in the same articles, and often in the same sentence. Low-Dk PCB materials have their place in high speed and high-frequency PCBs, but high-Dk PCB materials provide power integrity. Low-Dk PCBs are typically chosen as they tend to have lower loss tangent. Thus high-DK PCB materials tend to get overlooked for high speed and high-frequency PCBs. When we look at power integrity...

Introduction A few years back, I was among the leaders in one of Italy’s biggest Hackerspaces. There was an unearthly atmosphere when a place meant to bring all sorts of folks together opened its doors for the first time. It reminded me of the internet-famous band 2Cellos. Their music is a mixture of classic, pop and metal covers, played on cellos with varying levels of distortion. They can swiftly escalate from harmonies of long-held soothing...

At this point, I have written several articles and spoken at AltiumLive 2019 about adopting software design methodologies for electronics design. As you may have noticed by now, I put a lot of emphasis on using a unified system for both electronics and software design. Tightly coupling these two pieces in a design process is key because they have become so intertwined. Consider any type of embedded system that consists of electronics (i.e. PCBA)...