PCB Design Resources and Information | Altium

Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Top 4 Time Wasters in PCB Design Collaboration PCB design collaboration doesn’t have to be difficult when you use the right project management and communication tools. Read Article

DOE Releases Roadmap for Quantum Networking and Quantum Internet Now with quantum computing going mainstream, quantum networking is on the horizon. Here’s how this differs from classical networking. Read Article

Temperature Sensor Project: Digital Temperature Sensor ICs The final article in this series looks at digital temperature sensors pitting all the sensors we’ve tested against each other in a head to head contest over a wide range of environmental conditions to allow for a comparison of their functionality, accuracy, and behavior. Read Article

EMI Filter Simulation for Noise Suppression with Altium Designer 20 and Altium 365 Simulations can get very complicated, but Altium 365 helps you keep your simulation models and data organized. Read Article

How to Involve Customers in PCB Product Development If you’re a freelancer and you’ve led or managed a complex PCB design project, the need to involve your customer in the product development process may not be obvious. Your customer is probably a project manager at a bigger company, so they’ll be overseeing progress on the project and leading communication with you. If you work on a small team or as part of a large organization, involving customers in product development can be time-consuming Read Article

Transmission Line Transfer Function from ABCD and S-parameters High frequency and data rate channels can be routed as a mode-selective transmission line. Here’s when you should consider this routing technique. Read Article

The Advantages of ABCD Parameters for Analyzing Your PCB SI (Signal integrity) engineers always talk about S-parameters, but an alternative tool for circuit design and analysis is ABCD parameters. Read Article

Back Drilling in Altium Designer: One of the Easiest Ways to Improve Signal Integrity Back Drilling in Altium Designer is one of the Easiest Ways to Improve Signal Integrity. Click to see a Backdrilling example. Download PDF

Harness mmWave Routing with a Mode-Selective Transmission Line High frequency and data rate channels can be routed as a mode-selective transmission line. Here’s when you should consider this routing technique. Read Article

How to Setup HDI PCB Layout and Routing in Your PCB Design Software HDI PCB layout and routing seems more complicated than it really is. Here’s how you can get started with HDI layout and routing in Altium Designer. Read Article

What's the Difference Between Data Rate and Bandwidth? The difference between data rate and bandwidth has been obfuscated for the last 30 years. Here’s how they relate. Read Article

Stripline vs. Microstrip Width for Desired Impedance: Are They the Same? Stripline vs. microstrip width values are quite different; they can’t simply be interchanged. Let’s break down why and what you can expect from your PCBs. Read Article

Differential Pairs Without Ground: Is it a Problem? Some designers tell you that differential pairs without ground are acceptable. So who’s correct? We’ll examine the pros and cons of a differential pair ground plane. Read Article

What Goes into PCIe 5.0 Layout and Routing? Here are some PCIe 5.0 layout and routing guidelines for your next high speed add-in card and motherboard to support PCIe 5.0 devices. Read Article

Best Practices in Hardware Version Control Systems Read more about some best practices for using hardware version control systems in electronics design. Read Article

Signal Integrity for Mesh Ground Planes in Flex PCBs Even flex PCBs need a ground plane. Mesh ground planes can provide a 0 V reference in your PCB, but they have particular signal integrity requirements. Read Article

The Importance of PCB Documentation When it comes to real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. When it comes to ensuring a PCB will be built as designed, the emphasis is on documentation, documentation, documentation. This article describes the documents that need to be provided by the board design group to the fabricator, assembler, and test organization. Included is the description of the different drawings needed along with files and notes. All of these documents Read Article