Altium Designer

Altium Designer

What is Transfer Impedance in a PDN? We often talk about impedance in a PDN, but we always refer to self impedance. Here’s what you need to know about transfer impedance in your PCB. Read Article

Coming Soon: Altium CircuitMaker Pro® In 2015, Altium released Altium CircuitStudio® to best meet the needs of casual users, hobbyists, students, and PCB design aficionados on a budget. Learn about the new version coming to the public! Read Article

Spotting DDR4 Impedance Violations in High Speed PCB Design DDR4 is one of many high speed interfaces that requires impedance control during routing. If you can spot impedance discontinuities, you can prevent excess insertion/return losses in leading to your DDR4 memory modules. Read Article

The Basics of Signal Integrity Analysis in Your PCB The basics of signal integrity analysis in your PCB can be anything but basic. Simulation tools are great for calculating the behavior of signals in different nets during schematic and layout design, but you’ll still need to take some steps to interpret the results. As advanced as some signal integrity and EM simulation tools can get, they simply can’t compare to the information you can glean from measurements. Whichever method you use to examine Read Article

Identifying Near-field EMI in a PCB's Power Distribution Network Near-field EMI on the PDN in a PCB can be identified when you use a 3D field solver to examine your PCB layout. Here’s how Ansys SIwave integrates with Altium Designer for a powerful simulation workflow. Read Article

ISO 13485 Compliance: Tools for PCB Designers and Manufacturers Your Altium 365 workspace and Concord Pro can be used as part of a QMS system for ISO 13485 compliance. Here’s how cloud collaboration helps manufacturers. Read Article

12 Ideas for Implementing NFC in Your Design Read to learn about many possibilities for NFC; some of these project ideas are taken from commercially available products or research papers; others are ideas from working through reading the NFC standard. Read Article

Low Noise, Low EMI Power Distribution This board has several loads on it, but it is purely a distribution board with no regulation. The main loads are the hefty 5V Tilta nano focus motor, 5V SDI to HDMI converter, 5V Tilta follows focus control, and the battery voltage powered monitor. Out of these, only the SDI to HDMI convert needs remotely clean power. The motor, however, is very electrically noisy, so it needs good isolation. Read Article

Single Cell Lithium Polymer Battery Charger Project Learn how to create your first Altium project. This simple example shows you how to build a low-cost USB powered single cell lithium polymer battery charger. Read Article

How Material Characteristics Factor into High Speed PCB Signal Performance Evaluating laminates for a particular PCB implementation can be a complex, multilevel process, especially when it comes to the operation of key components on the board, such as high-speed differential pairs. This article will examine some of the factors that come into play with the evaluation process: materials with a low dielectric content versus materials that are low loss; comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each of them; taking into Read Article

What Happens to PCIe Signals Traversing Blind Vias at Higher Speeds? In our one, two and three-day courses, which we conduct at technical and trade conferences as well as at private on-site classes, we will frequently be asked about particular technology trends and their impact on current designs. Of late, a number of these questions have focused on how the use of PCI Express (also known as PCIe) at higher frequencies impacts signals that change layers through vias. Limits on the number of vias in PCIe generations Read Article

Selecting and Tracking a General-Purpose Op-Amp Learn the most critical parameters that should be considered when you're selecting a general-purpose Op-Amp. Read Article

RGB + White LED Strip Controller I’ve been playing around with RGB LED strips recently for lighting up my test equipment rack as well as some display shelves. On the display shelves, I have the RGB LED strips behind the shelves, which gives a great definition to the objects on the shelf. But I also want to have a high CRI white LED strip on each shelf to light up the objects. Typical RGBW LED strips available through online marketplaces do not have very good white LEDs, and I’m Read Article

Know the Power Dissipation Understanding power dissipation of an individual component, an electrical block, or even the whole electronics system is essential for electronics engineers. It is important not only to avoid exceeding the maximum limits of components but also to calculate unknown parameters in input or output sides because power dissipation is related to system voltage and current. In this article, I describe my practices for analyzing power dissipation in Read Article

Building the Library - Unified Data Model Introduction This may come as a shock to some, but I was raised on a farm back in Pennsylvania. Every spring, we would prepare for the planting season. It was amazing to me to take the seeds, plant them in the field, tend them, and in time end up with a crop. Within each one of those seeds was packed with an untapped potential to produce something amazing. In the same way, in the PCB Design field, we have untapped potential available to us in the Read Article

Planning for the Future with Cirris Systems and Altium Technological advancements have been a hallmark of the past few decades, from the widespread adoption of internet technology to the smartphones and wireless devices we rely on every day to stay connected. While few could have predicted the speed at which technology has grown since 1984, back when Salt Lake City’s Cirris Systems was a startup company, designing products by hand on a humble kitchen table. Since then, they’ve become a major leader Read Article

12V DC Uninterruptible Power Supply I live in a rural village that tends to have intermittent power when there are high winds or storms. Because of this, my computers, servers, and network equipment are all on relatively low-cost, uninterruptible power supplies. These all run on sealed lead acid batteries and are not an overly efficient way to power a DC device such as a Raspberry Pi or internet router as the incoming mains. AC charges a DC battery, which then creates AC power Read Article