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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.

Why you should be using Concord Pro? Introduction A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or so the aphorism goes. I think it’s worth noting that the first step is the most difficult to take. In my experience, the best engineers suffer from a condition in which they, before even taking that first step, endlessly consider “What if?” scenarios. You know what I am talking about here... “What if we do this and something happens?” This issue is so prevalent in our Read Article

Top Tips from Experienced Flex Designers Fabrication: In general, advice given about flexible circuit fabrication is split between knowledge of the fabricator and their process, and communication. Knowledge of the printed circuit board fabrication process is not as common as it once was, and this is even more apparent with the subtleties of flex manufacturing. Understanding the manufacturing process helps to illuminate areas that are more challenging for fabrication, as well as areas Read Article

PCB Design for Testability to Ensure High Yield and Quality If you remember your days in school, then you probably remember the feeling of happiness and celebration when you pass a big exam. You’ll feel the same sense of adulation when your board spin passes a barrage of pre and post assembly tests, but a complex design might not reach that stage unless you implement the right design for testability methods. There are some simple steps that can help your manufacturer identify and quickly implement Read Article

A PCB Design Review Checklist Gets You to Manufacturing Quickly From what I’ve heard in some of my favorite podcasts, successful people keep a lot of to-do lists. Likewise, PCB designers can ensure their own successful manufacturing run when they keep a PCB design review checklist. After you send your design data over to your manufacturer, their engineers will go through your design with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything that could reduce yields or anything that appears as a discrepancy between design Read Article

What Impact will the Coronavirus have on Your Designs? Judy Warner: Mike, we are hearing and watching the tough impact of the coronavirus on the world stage. From your perspective as a globally-focused editor, what are you seeing and hearing that is immediately impacting the electronics industry? Mike Buetow: There is clearly disruption in the supply chain at several levels. Taiwanese-owned factories make up the leading share of bare boards worldwide, at about 34%. About 63% of the output value of Read Article

How to Create a Test Point Schematic Symbol and Footprint in Altium Designer Bare board testing is like a moment of truth, where your fabricator and your design team determines whether a board passes inspection. Some basic test fixtures and testing points should be indicated in your schematic and your PCB layout, especially when they are critical for evaluating board functionality. So what is the best way to do this? You might rely on your manufacturer to assign test points, but for critical circuit blocks, you should Read Article

Transmission Line Impedance: The Six Important Values When looking through the various transmission line impedance values, characteristic impedance and differential impedance generally stand out as the two important values as these are typically specified in signalling standards. However, there are really six transmission line impedance values that are important in PCB design. Sometimes there are seven, depending on which textbooks or technical articles you read. Characteristic impedance equations Read Article

PCBs vs. Multichip Modules, Chiplets, and Silicon Interconnect Fabric 2019 saw a resurgence in talk of multichip modules, chiplets, and silicon interconnect fabric. An article in the September issue of IEEE Spectrum claimed that silicon interconnect fabric, a method for connecting chiplets on a multichip module, would eliminate PCBs and bulky SoCs for many applications, specifically motherboards. Will any of this ever come to pass? Obviously, we can’t know the future, but designers should be aware of changes in the Read Article

Bypass and Decoupling Capacitor Placement Guidelines Power integrity problems are normally viewed from the perspective of the power supply, but looking at the output from ICs is just as important. Decoupling and bypass capacitors are intended to compensate power fluctuations seen on the PDN, which ensures your signal levels are consistent and a constant voltage is seen at the power/ground pins on an IC. We’ve compiled some important bypass and decoupling capacitor placement guidelines to help you Read Article

Filter Transfer Function and Pole-Zero Analysis in Altium Designer I remember spending hours on circuit analysis problems in my electronics classes, and I learned to analyze all sorts of filter/amplifier configurations by hand. The circuits were usually tractable with Ohm’s law and Kirchoff’s laws, as long as there was no feedback in the circuit. Circuits for advanced applications, such as wideband or multiband matching circuits for RF components, can quickly become difficult to analyze by hand. But as the Read Article

PCB Design and Layout for Hyperspectral Imaging Systems What was once confined to the most advanced aerospace applications is now commonplace enough to be found in our everyday lives. Insulation, CCDs, air purifiers, and other technologies wouldn’t be possible without a robust space program in the 1960s and 1970s. One less well-known technology that deserves such attention is remote sensing, which has been used casually and for scientific research since the first American and Russian space flights Read Article

NB-IoT Antenna Design and Layout for Your PCB With all the possible wireless communication protocols available for use in a mobile device, it can be difficult to keep them straight. Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-M are two low-bandwidth protocols that provide remote monitoring capabilities over several miles of distance. While the data rates are quite low in both protocols, these protocols are excellent choices for lightweight embedded systems, such as small sensor arrays, industrial or Read Article

Single-Ended Switching Versus Differential Signaling Just about every place you look these days when you talk about high-speed PCB design, the signaling required for a product is, by default, differential signaling. But, differential signaling was not always at the forefront of product development. The original method of moving data was single-ended signaling. And, in some instances, it is still in use today. This article will describe the differences between single-ended and differential signaling Read Article

Is it Simultaneous Switching Noise or Crosstalk? How can you distinguish simultaneous switching noise and crosstalk? Take a look at the difference between these two signal integrity problems in this article. Read Article

Simulating Impedance Matching Network S-Parameters Here’s how you can calculate the S-parameters for your antenna impedance matching network in Altium Designer. Read Article

Antenna Impedance Matching Network Simulation in Altium Designer Need to simulate an antenna impedance matching network? The SPICE tools in Altium Designer can help. Read Article

Analog Signal Bandwidth and its Relation to Power Integrity Here’s how your analog signal bandwidth interacts with your PDN, and how it affects power integrity. Read Article