About Author

Rafał Stępień

Rafał Stępień is an electronics engineer (and electronics hobbyist for over 30 years), specializing in analog, mixed, and RF electronics with over 20 years of industry experience. During this time, he has worked as a hardware engineer and electronics advisor for many companies. He holds a PhD in electronic engineering and has numerous scientific publications related to signal generation and processing methods, including a book on direct digital synthesis. He was the chief engineer in two projects co-founded by the European Union and the National Center for Research and Development in Poland: the design of a DAB+ transmitter and DAB+ signal analyzer, co-funded by the EU (Horizon 2020), and the IoT system for the Agricultural Market (Agrotech), co-financed by The National Center for Research and Development.

Rafał runs his own company providing training and technical consulting services in fields such as RF and antenna design, SMPS design, EMC and RED compliance courses, high-speed and analog signal processing training, and others. He is also the organizer of the Hardware Design Masterclasses conference, dedicated to professional electronics design.

In his free time, he focuses on developing soft skills related to managing R&D teams and constructing prototypes of various electronic devices and conducting experiments related to electronics, mainly for fun and for his YouTube channel.

Recent Articles

Understanding Signal Reflections for High-Speed Design Introduction Signal reflections and the engineering related to impedance matching are one of the basic topics related to design of high-speed digital systems. In the case of digital system with a high bit rate, in which information about the state of bits "0" and "1" is sent in the form of a square wave signal, it is assumed that the rise (or fall) time of the rising and falling edges are negligible in relation to the binary signal frequency. In Read Article

Signal Integrity Principles based on Altium Designer 24 Introduction to High-Speed and Signal Integrity Digital systems are one of the fundamental areas of modern electronics. The advancement in highly efficient processors or other digital systems, like FPGAs or wide-bandwidth data acquisition systems that use fast ADCs converters together with DSPs or FPGAs, requires a different approach to electronic design, especially PCB that includes interconnects between various integrated circuits or modules Read Article

Efficient DC-DC Converter Design: Automated Measurements with Altium Designer 24 MixedSim One of the key challenges in modern electronics is providing tailored power supply solutions. This section may be composed of many different SMPS (switched mode power supply) like AC to DC converters or DC to DC converters. In high power applications, the AC to DC conversion may require a PFC controller to achieve a good power factor of the device (i.e., reduction in harmonics and apparent power consumption). Typical challenges in SMPS design are Read Article

SPICE Simulation Module - Automated Measurements

SPICE Simulation Module: How To Use Automated Measurements in Simulations To Save Time and Money in Design Challenges Simulation of electronics circuits is a key factor to your design success. SPICE circuit simulator may be used to speed the design analysis. Altium Designer will help you to simulate your designs in an efficient and accurate manner, providing a deep insight to your circuit functional operation. One of the key types of analysis in Altium Designer is the transient analysis - a time domain simulation of your circuit. An example of transient analysis Read Article