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.

Problems in Multiboard BOM Generation? Unified Design Tools Can Help Dealing with a multiboard BOM can feel like shuffling stacks of paper... Your next multiboard system is likely complicated enough. You’ve got to worry about multiple layouts, multiple schematics, signal integrity within and between boards, mechanical form and function, and EMI/EMC. With all these design aspects to worry about, documenting every aspect of your board can be a time suck. With so many new products being built from multiboard systems Read Article

Signal Distortion in Your PCB: Sources and Solutions Length matching for high-speed signals is all about synchronization... Signal distortion often gets a passing mention in many discussions on signal integrity and circuit analysis. As more networking products start running at higher speeds and use complicated modulation schemes, you’ll find that signal distortion becomes a serious problem that contributes to bit error rates. Distortion sources are cited as one of the primary bottlenecks preventing Read Article

Electronics System-Level Design in Altium Designer Electronics system level design lets you focus on functionality and abstraction The day-to-day life of a PCB layout engineer is all about translating schematics into a real, manufacturable PCB. Before this can happen, designs begin at an abstract level that focuses on designing functionality. As the overall design process progresses, design requirements are made more granular, reaching the signal processing level and, eventually, the component Read Article

How to Create an Amplifier Simulation in Altium Designer Length matching for high-speed signals is all about synchronization... We’d all love to get to the test and measurement stage quicker. It means you’ve finally gotten through the design phase and you’re ready to test prototypes. It might also mean you’ve narrowed down to the components you need for your system and your evaluating proposed functionality for your system. Tests and measurements with your circuits are very important, but they won’t Read Article

How to Choose an RGB LED Panel for Your Next Upverter Project Billboards are just one application for RGB LED panels I remember the days where I would drive down the highway and see workers placing new graphics on billboards dotting the roadside. Now you hardly see this because so many billboards have gone digital. You can thank RGB LED panel display tiles for this, which allows multiple advertisements to share the same space and allows for some interesting animated advertisements. RGB LED panel displays Read Article

How to Add an RGB Matrix Display to Your Board in Upverter Micro RGB Matrix Tile connected to the WiFi RGB LED Matrix board. When it comes to custom display applications, you may not need to go the route of including a large-scale LED or LCD display screen. For specialized or artistic lighting applications, you can benefit from a system that provides selectable color mixing and distribution across your lighting module. This is where an RGB matrix display is an ideal choice for your next lighting Read Article

Calculating your PCB Complexity & First Pass Yields There are four things I know about PCB yields—mathematically! PCB yields are not normally distributed. They are what is called GAMMA Distributed. Defects that produce low yields may be systemic and repeatable, others may be just random—but you can test for this. You can predict yields if you take the time to collect the data. Yields are such wonderful things! I wonder why we don’t write about them more. They are the dividing phenomena that often Read Article

Product Design Trends in 2020: Modular Hardware vs. Modular Software Containerization is a core concept in modular hardware and modular software Modular hardware design is everywhere and has been on the rise in the embedded world. The drastic rise of the Arduino and Raspberry Pi ecosystems has encouraged greater use of a modular architecture. Open-source hardware platforms are gaining momentum, particularly in single board computer design and development board design. When it comes to modular software, we are Read Article

Adding a GNSS Module to Your SBC with Upverter Adding GPS functionality to an embedded system is easier than you think Embedded systems for edge computing, autonomous systems, and other highly mobile systems need embedded navigation capabilities, but adding a GPS module to your next embedded system can be difficult. You’ll need to consider precise layout for GPS receivers in order to prevent signal degradation. There’s also the issue of compatibility with other global navigation satellite Read Article

Military-Grade Single Board Computer Design for UAVs A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, a hunter-killer surveillance UAV Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), colloquially known as drones, are aircraft designed to be piloted without a human on board. Drones are finding realistic uses outside the military, including applications in surveillance, agriculture, search and rescue, scientific studies, shipping, and many other areas. As tactical demands increase, so have the processing, memory, and ruggedness Read Article

Building A Faraday Cage To Contain EMI, Part 2 Part 1 of this article addressed the various ways in which EMI impacts products, and covered how to build a Faraday cage to contain it. This part of the article will focus on getting power into a product without letting EMI out; building a Faraday cage for rack-mounted products, determining whether or not logic ground should be connected to a Faraday cage while also providing some additional ways to build one. How to Get Power into a Product Read Article

Building a Faraday Cage To Contain EMI, Part 1 EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) is a phenomenon that can plague a design if it is not properly and carefully addressed. One of the most often used but not necessarily thoroughly understood ways to contain EMI is through the use of a Faraday cage. This two-part article will provide an overview of EMI, how it can interfere with other products, and how to address EMI through the successful design and implementation of Faraday cages. Included in Read Article

DC Analysis of Linear and Nonlinear Circuits in Schematic Design These circuits can always use DC analysis If you’re working with a new design that involves some custom circuitry, it always helps to understand how the circuit behaves in DC. There is some merit to this, particularly if you are designing a custom power conditioning system, amplifier, equalizer, or other circuit. These circuits and many more require a range of analyses to evaluate their functionality, but the most fundamental of these is a DC Read Article

Why is There a Transmission Line Critical Length? Do you know the transmission line critical length for these traces? There is a little secret that most literature on PCB design will not tell you: every conductor in your PCB that carries an oscillating analog signal or a digital signal can act like a transmission line. Many prominent companies, including PCB manufacturers, are responsible for perpetuating the myth that transmission line effects only occur when the transmission line exceeds a Read Article

Three Common PCB Design Mistakes You Can Spot in Your Gerbers Spotting some common PCB design mistakes will help get your board into production faster I’ll admit that I was not an excellent student until I hit graduate school. At that point, I started putting more energy into my homework than most other areas of my life. Sure, my social life became non-existent, but I soon became an exemplary student and I never looked back. Just like you need to do your homework while in school, you should do your homework Read Article

Pulsed Laser Diode Driver Circuit Layout for Lidar As part of the sensor suite for autonomous vehicles, lidar range maps play an important role in object identification in the surrounding environment, alongside car radar and other sensors or imaging systems. Building a functional driver circuit with small form factor and sleek packaging is critical for enabling lidar imaging/rangefinding around a self-driving vehicle. These same circuits can be adapted to other lidar applications, such as Read Article

PDN Impedance Analysis and Modeling: From Schematic to Layout We talk a lot about signal integrity around here, but signal integrity is intimately related to power integrity. This is about more than just reducing switching noise or ripple from your power supply/voltage regulator. This is where the impedance of your PDN in your PCB can rear its ugly head in certain designs, causing components in your board to fail to work as designed due to power problems. Here’s where it helps to understand some basic Read Article