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As a child, I used to watch Star Trek and always marveled at all the technology. Anything wireless on the show was particularly fascinating, especially to a 5-year old. As I aged, and as so many cool things from science fiction became reality, I realized that all these capabilities start with great PCB design. Whether you’re building a better Wifi router, GPS system, or two-way radio, you’ll need to decide which type of antenna to use and how...

Routing traces around on your PCB is like knitting a quilt. Not only can it take forever, but it requires very precise steps to ensure that all your stitches fit together seemlessly. If you get your stitches wrong, then everything can fall apart. Just like we have automatic threading sewing machines that increase productivity, autorouters can do the same for your PCB. But be wary: not all autorouters have the same capabilities. The best PCB...

Every year, I spend time working on my house and car to keep them maintained. Trips to the hardware store include adding parts to my stash at home and I try to keep the trips to a minimum so I can enjoy my downtime. There’s nothing worse than chilling to tunes in my garage on a warm summer day only to find that I don’t have a part. Dropping everything to make a run to the hardware store means completely disrupting my afternoon. So managing my...

This article is intended to define the new challenges and provide guidance in how to successfully engineer the Power Delivery System (PDS) so it meets the needs of new technologies. As integrated circuit technology has made it possible to put billions of transistors on a single IC it has resulted in very powerful systems on a chip. This has made it possible to put the equivalent of supercomputers inside video games, cell phones and a host of...

Check out this quick snippet of the Altium Podcast with guru of high speed design Lee Ritchey The primary reason that differential signaling is dominating the digital world is that far higher data bandwidths can be achieved over a pair of wires than with parallel, single-ended signaling protocols. The Internet as we know it would not be possible without differential signaling. This information is intended to clear up any confusion about...

There are three demands placed on stackup design: controlled impedance, crosstalk control and the need for interplane capacitance. Some fabricators could get the impedance right in a stackup, but there is no way for them to account for the other two. This responsibility rests with the design engineer who is the only one who knows what is needed and how to implement the needed control. This information is intended to provide guidance on the...