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

First Prize Winner at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair My name is Piotr Lazarek, and I’m a second year student at the “Filomata” secondary school in Gliwice. Since 2017 I have been engaged in developing new technologies within the sector of precision agriculture, and for my most recent project I worked on the creation of an autonomous vehicle which uses a replaceable ion-selective electrode system in order to measure concentrations of different elements inside soil. This work generates useful data Read Article
The Race to Hire Embedded Software Engineers in the Automotive Industry Embedded software engineers will take a new place of prominence in the automotive industry The current economic climate in the US is humming along and has been primarily driven by growth in the tech sector. Everything from consumer electronics, SaaS, and advanced manufacturing are helping drive growth. The electronics portion of the automotive industry is not typically seen as sitting at the cutting edge of new technology, until you look to the Read Article
Design and Analysis of Chirped Automotive Radar Systems Thanks to the German inventor Christian Huelsmeyer, radar has been around since 1904, the year he patented his telemobiloscope. This simple radar device could detect ships up to 3000 m away and operated at wavelengths from 40-50 cm with a separate receiver antenna. The device could only be used to determine the presence of a distant object, but later versions could be used to calculate range. Today’s semi-autonomous vehicles, and upcoming fully Read Article
Damping and Reflection Transfer with a Series Termination Resistor Even these transmission lines might require a series termination resistor Trace, source, and load impedance matching are important in boards that contain transmission lines. Whenever the rise time of a signal is much shorter than the round trip propagation time for signals, you should make sure these impedances match in your interconnects. Impedance controlled design and routing can help ensure your traces have consistent impedance, but some Read Article
Pole-Zero Analysis and Transient Analysis in High Speed Design Overshoot and ringing in transient analysis. Image credit. As part of high speed design, transmission line effects in traces and impedance matching normally receive a lot of attention. This is understandable, as switching speed in a digital IC is the primary factor that determines whether termination needs to be considered in a transmission line. However, any RLC circuit can exhibit a transient response, which appears as overshoot or undershoot Read Article
Joe Grand on Hacking, Badgelife and AltiumLive Today we have an extra-special guest named Joe Grand of Grand Idea Studio. Joe started hacking software and hardware at the ripe old age of seven! He ended up becoming a part of hacker history and you’re going to love hearing about it. He’s also co-founder of The Badgelife movement, and co-host of a Discovery TV channel called ‘Prototype This.’ We’re delighted to announce that he’s agreed to be a keynote speaker at AltiumLive, October 9 to 11 in Read Article
PCB Design Rule Verification in Agile Development Agile development relies on a unique workflow that can benefit from PCB design rule verification I used to think that agile development is just a software development methodology with specific rules and processes. Agile hardware design processes seem to be rigid when viewed from the surface, but any agile design process is designed to allow a team to adapt to change throughout the product development cycle. In reality, the central ideas in agile Read Article
BOM Management and PCB Design Data Synchronization Cloud-based tools for data management can keep your design and production data synchronized If you lead a design team, then your job is already difficult enough. Your design teams need to adhere to a development schedule and manage requirements changes as they create a new product. Collaboration is key in any environment with multiple players, and your design tools play an important role in creating a productive environment. Ensuring that all Read Article
Embedded Optical Interconnects in PCBs for Ultra High Speed Design 5G will be here sooner than you think, creating plenty of new opportunities for PCB designers, manufacturers, and companies that provide optical networking equipment. The huge data transfer rates in 5G networks and in specialized applications like aerospace requires greater use of optical interconnects throughout electronic systems, ultimately requiring conversion to electro-optic systems and fully photonic systems. What can PCB designers do to Read Article
Agile Product Lifecycle Management Methods in PCB Design Supercharge your productivity with agile product lifecycle management Any industry that relies heavily on new technologies must frequently reinvent itself and address product obsolescence. Every piece of technology has a finite lifecycle that ends due to obsolescence or malfunction. Electronics and the PCBs that support them are no different; components on PCBs eventually wear out and malfunction, or the product can no longer compete with a Read Article
Landless Vias One persistent myth is that PCB vias MUST have annular rings. I thought this for many years until our Japanese partners introduced us to landless vias. We said, “You can’t do that, the vias have to have lands!” They replied, “Try it out and test it?” So, we created a test vehicle and tested thousands of vias with various diameters against numerous annular ring vias. Guess what? They were right!! As the annular ring got smaller, the failures Read Article
Rick Hartley on EMI, Noise Reduction Today we talk to Rick Hartley about EMI, noise control and why it can be so difficult to get under control in your PCB designs. Listen in, because this is really a sneak peek into the full-day class Rick will be presenting at AltiumLive. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: Show Highlights: What in your childhood gave you some clues that you’d end up being an Engineer? It started with trying to Read Article
What is an Engineering Bill of Materials in Agile PCB Design? If you’ve ever prepared a new device for manufacturing, then you’re probably familiar with the different types of bills of materials. Each document has its place in the design and production planning process. If you understand the role of each type of bill of materials, you can take advantage of the information it contains to improve your design process. If you’re an agile hardware development team, then you know that your design team will need Read Article
Why Your BOM Excel Template is Going the Way of the Dinosaur It’s time to ditch your BOM Excel template The saying goes in software, “great coders use great code”. The same idea applies to Excel templates. I like to use Excel templates for a number of business tasks. I use invoice templates, finance calculators, and an accounting template. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, so why not use a great template when someone makes it available for free? The usefulness of an Excel template depends on the data Read Article
Optical Transceiver Layout for Gigabit and Faster Ethernet Mind your manufacturing process during optical transceiver layout and design The story of PCB layout and channel design for optical transceivers is really a story of high speed PCB design; it requires considering all aspects of high speed design, especially at very high data rates. Data rates reaching 400 Gbps on 10 lanes (that’s 40 Gbps per lane!) are possible over long distances with the right PCB layout and routing techniques. Challenges in Read Article
What is Printed Electronics Design? What is printed electronics design? The answer is simple: it is electronics design. You utilize circuit theories, mathematical calculations and computer-based simulations for doing electronics design. You design electrical functionality and performance for a product using printed electronics materials. The materials are the key point as the materials used for printed electronics have different electrical performance characteristics than those Read Article
OnTrack Newsletter - July 2019 Vol 3. No. 3 OnTrack Newsletter July 2019 VOL. 3 No 3 AltiumLive 2019: The Hat Trick The third annual AltiumLive: Annual PCB Design conference is almost here again and will be located in San Diego and Frankfurt. Learn more about all that’s in store for this year’s event and how we plan to pull off a perfect hat trick! Read Article EIPC: A European Community of PCB Professionals In mid-June, I had the great pleasure of attending my first EIPC Conference in Read Article