Altium Designer - PCB Design Software

Easy, Powerful, Modern: Altium Designer is the world’s most trusted PCB design system for professionals and students. Browse our resources to learn more about how Altium Designer is revolutionizing the PCB design industry, and empowering designers to bring all of their ideas to life!

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microstrip to ground clearance

Microstrip Ground Clearance Part 2: How Clearance Affects Losses In a previous article, I provided a discussion and some simulation results on the necessary clearance between impedance controlled traces and nearby grounded copper pour. What we found was that, once the spacing between the pour and the trace becomes too small, the trace becomes an impedance-controlled coplanar waveguide (with or without ground). We also saw that the 3W rule for the spacing between the trace and the grounded copper pour is a bit Read Article

Differential Pairs and Differential Signals

What Are Differential Pairs and Differential Signals? Differential pairs and differential signals are the mainstay of high speed digital communication and data transfer. Read Article

what is signal integrity

What is Signal Integrity? Learn about the basics of signal integrity and how you can ensure your PCB layout complies with best practices for signal integrity. Read Article

ISM Bands Around the World

ISM Bands Around the World ISM bands (industrial, scientific, and medical) are parts of the RF (radio-frequency) spectrum reserved for general use by, as the name suggests, scientific, medical, and industrial devices. Their creation was in response to specific demands by these industries for access to the RF spectrum to perform functions without having to compete with the traditionally intensive users of RF, the communications, and defense sectors. The critical thing to Read Article

Choosing the Right Microphone for Embedded Applications

Choosing the Right Microphone for Embedded Applications If you need to capture sound waves for your electrical device to process, you'll need a microphone. However, microphones these days have become very advanced, and there are so many options to choose from. While they are relatively small, they come with a broad range of options and technologies. They range from the relatively simple and popular condenser type microphones to state-of-the-art sound conversion solutions incorporating internal Read Article

PCB routing

How to Route a PCB Learn about Routing a PCB and how to design traces to proper routing in any device. You can access the best PCB routing features in Altium Designer. Read Article

Gibbs ringing

What Causes Gibbs Ringing in High-speed Channel Simulations? Gibbs ringing is both a measurement artifact and a calculation artifact that arises in band-limited channels. Make sure you understand how this arises due to transform and convolution operations. Read Article

PCB connectors shock-resistant

Altium Designer Makes Connector Creation and Placement Easy See how you can select, find, and place shock-resistant PCB connectors in your layout with Altium Designer. Read Article

MOSFETs in series

Should You Use Power MOSFETs in Series? In this article, we look in greater depth at how to properly use combinations of MOSFETs in series compared to their use in parallel. Read Article

Comparing All Serial Communications Protocols

Comparing All Serial Communications Protocols At the end of this series, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of each type of Serial Communication Protocol available to transfer information between microcontrollers, data-producing, and data-processing peripherals, and other intelligent devices. Read Article

multiphase buck converter RF power supply

Designing a Multiphase Buck Converter for an RF Power Supply Consider a multiphase buck converter for the regulator stage in your RF power supply. Alongside envelope tracking, you can ensure high efficiency power delivery and transmission. Read Article

best circuit design software

Use the Best Circuit Design Software With SPICE and Schematic Capture Use the best circuit design software to create your next electronic design and start your PCB layout. Read Article

Serial Communications Protocols - CAN and LIN

Serial Communications Protocols - CAN and LIN In this article, Part 8 in our series of articles looking at different Serial Communication Protocols, we discuss the popular CAN and LIN protocols combined. Read Article

High current switched mode power supply PCB layout

Switched-Mode Power Supply PCB Layout Guidelines Create and simulate your design and follow these switched-mode power supply PCB layout guidelines. Read Article

PCB power plane routing

Should You Route Signals in Your PCB Power Plane? Before you cut up your PCB power plane with signals, pay attention to things like impedance control power plane current capacity to ensure reliability. Read Article

MOSFET Power dissipation calculator

Using SPICE as a MOSFET Power Dissipation Calculator The circuit design and simulation features in Altium Designer can be your MOSFET power dissipation calculator. Read Article

input impedance

How to Use Input Impedance in Circuits and Transmission Lines The concept of input impedance is used to understand power transfer and matching in complex interconnects. Read Article