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.

Wideband Signal Analysis in Ultra-high Speed PCB Design Wideband signal analysis may seem like black magic, but it does more than create pretty graphs. Read our introduction to wideband signal analysis to learn more. Read Article

Serial Communications Protocols: Part Seven - 1-Wire Many Serial Communication Protocols are available for transferring data between electronic devices, whether that’s a microcontroller reading data from a sensor or sending data to a storage device. This is one of a series of articles that will cover some of the more popular protocols in common usage. We’ll complete the series with a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each. My aim is that the series will prove to be a useful Read Article

Serial Communications Protocols Part Six - I2C In this next installment in our series on serial communications protocols, we’re looking at the popular I2C protocol. This follows on from the preceding articles where we are looking at some of the different types of Serial Communication Protocols available. These provide a practical solution to the transfer of data between devices over reasonably short distances. Typical applications include the capture of large amounts of data from data Read Article

PCB Layout Guidelines for Switching Power Supplies and Regulators Read our short list of layout guidelines for switching power supplies and high current voltage regulators. Read Article

One-Stop Design Team Configuration A heavy focus is usually put on managing your design data, but what about managing your design team? A mismanaged Watch Video

Unleashing your High Density PCB Designs Chris Hunrath, Vice President of Technology at Insulectro joins us in this episode and learn how PCB designers can benefit from this new (not so new) Modified Semi Additive Process (MSAP) Technology. Read Article

How to Combat Power Supply EMI in Your PCB Power supply EMI can be like a ghost lurking in your PCB layout, but some simple design choices can help you prevent excess EMI from your power supply or power regulator. Read Article

RF PCB Material Comparison for mmWave Devices Here’s a comparison of the best RF PCB materials or your high-frequency analog products. Read Article

All About IPC-4101 and IPC-4103 Slash Sheets PCB laminate material requirements are outlined in slash sheets as specified in the IPC-4101 standard. Read our guide to learn about this standard and how materials are specified. Read Article

Troubleshooting EMC from Your Workbench EMC expert Ken Wyatt joins us in this episode to answer frequently asked EMC questions—a sneak peak to his EMC Book Series. Read Article

ECAD-MCAD Collaboration for Improved Product Development Working between the Electronic and Mechanical design domains brings unique challenges. ECAD and MCAD tools have different design objectives and Watch Video

Leveraging the Free Footprint Community to Design at Lightning Speed In this article, we reviewed a few different offerings of free footprint library resources for Altium Designer. We also briefly covered how to migrate those libraries to your Altium 365. Read Article

Configuring a Hardware in the Loop Project This article will walk through an example project of a board designed in Altium Designer and run through a DevOps flow using hardware in the loop testing against its firmware. Read Article

Designing 5G Devices The next stage in the evolution of mobile telephony is here with the roll-out of 5G. The designer looking to incorporate functionality to handle 5G signals into their circuits will face some challenging issues. So, what’s so special about 5G. The main change in the jump from 4G to 5G is the frequency band at which signals are transmitted. For 4G, this band covered 0.7 GHz up to 2.5 GHz. For 5G, this new band is an order of magnitude larger, with Read Article

The Digital Engineer's Guide to RF PCB Layout and Routing Read our guide to learn some best practices for RF PCB layout and routing. We’ll also look at how simulation tools can help you evaluate your RF PCB layout. Read Article

Continuous Conduction Mode in an SMPS: What is it and Why it Matters Learn more about continuous conduction mode and how to design to this condition in your power supply. The best design and simulation tools can help you verify continuous conduction mode is reached. Read Article

Serial Communications Protocols - Part Four: RS-485 In Part 4 of a series of articles about some of the popular Serial Communication Protocols, we explore the popular RS-485 protocol standard. Read Article