High-Speed PCB Design

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High-Speed PCB Design

Tips for Real-World PCB Design: Timing, Communication, and Traceability

Tips for Real-World PCB Design: Timing, Communication, and Traceability I love food; I love the preparation, finding the ingredients, adding the minute adjustments of seasonings and salt, and cooking multiple courses at once. But when I first started cooking for myself, I prepared each part of the meal individually. I found it immensely difficult to keep track of the different dishes and ensure none stuck to the pan—or went without stirring for too long. So I sacrificed time and did each task individually. What my Read Article

How the Right Tools in Your PCB Toolkit Can Help Your Next Design

How the Right Tools in Your PCB Toolkit Can Help Your Next Design When my sons were young, it was a joy for me to introduce and show them how to use tools for repair or construction. They would ask questions about the different tools in my toolkit, and my pair of old Channellock pliers really seemed to catch their interest. To tell the truth, those Channellocks are my favorite too. I inherited them from my dad, and still use them. They’re the first tool in my kit that I look for when I need to solve a problem Read Article

High-Speed Design Techniques: Trace Tuning for Routing Length Matching

High-Speed Design Techniques: Trace Tuning for Routing Length Matching The first time I heard someone talking about “tuning” their high speed design techniques, the memory of my middle school band came to mind. Back in those days, “tuning” meant taking kids who lacked experience and who used tired old instruments and trying to turn it all into something that blended together. As you would expect, our first attempts at being in tune were not very successful. After some work learning about signal integrity, the ground Read Article

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: How to Eliminate Crosstalk

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: Techniques for Avoiding Crosstalk Wondering how to reduce crosstalk? Crosstalk is the unintentional electromagnetic coupling between traces on a PCB. Let’s take a look at what crosstalk is and how to reduce crosstalk in high-speed PCB design. Read Article

PCB Design Software Features To Consider

PCB Design Software Features To Consider Before making a decision on buying a home, you would probably ask a lot of questions. Is it close to the facilities and services that are important to you? Is it in a good and safe neighborhood? Will the layout of the house satisfy your needs? These are all important questions that need to be answered before you commit to living there. In the same way, buying new PCB design software deserves the same level of scrutiny. You will want to find out Read Article

Omer Mahgoub from Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Africa and PCB Design for Astronomy

Omer Mahgoub from Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Africa and PCB Design for Astronomy Judy Warner: Omer, will you please share what the SKA is, what countries are involved, and what purpose it serves? Omer Mahgoub: The SKA (Square Kilometre Array) is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, with a total collecting area of 1 square kilometer and located on two continents (Africa and Australia). Organizations from 10 countries are members of the SKA: Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Bypass Capacitor Place and Route Tips

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Bypass Capacitor Place and Route Tips Many years ago, the majority of the board designs that I was involved with were simple digital designs. Placing and routing bypass capacitors in those designs was very easy, and often the circuitry was slow enough that ceramic capacitors were not needed. Most of the time we considered bypass capacitor placement and routing as more of an afterthought than as a primary design consideration. I remember how some of the engineers even instructed me to Read Article

Engineering a Layer Stack Up for High Speed Design

Engineering a Layer Stack Up for High Speed Design Most of your board's simpler EMI/EMC problems, signal integrity problems, and power integrity problems can be solved or reduced with the right layer stackup. In high-speed PCB design and in RF PCB design, the layer stackup is the first place to start engineering the board to ensure it will operate within the intended operational parameters. But like any engineered component, a high-speed layer stackup must balance many functional goals, as well Read Article

High Speed PCB Layout Guidelines

High Speed PCB Layout Guidelines: Placement Tips and Strategies In real estate, the buzzword is; “location, location, location”. Interestingly enough, the same can be said of high-speed PCB layout. Although all aspects of the high-speed PCB design process are important, component placement is especially important for ensuring easy routing, minimizing EMI, and possibly eliminating the need for some extra layers. Location placement methods that work without a problem in a standard PCB design may not satisfy the Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Component Shapes Considerations

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Component Shapes Considerations When starting a high speed PCB design, there’s a lot that must be considered before the design ever gets into layout. Schematic organization, board materials & layer configuration, critical component placement, and how high speed signals are to be routed are all aspects of high speed design that need to be planned for. Often there is one area that doesn’t get as much consideration as everything else, and that is the component footprint shapes Read Article

Stripline vs Microstrip: Understanding The Differences and The Best PCB Routing Guidelines

Stripline vs Microstrip: PCB Routing Differences and Guidelines Traces in a PCB are given two possible names based on their location in a PCB stackup: striplines and microstrips. In a PCB, a stripline and microstrip are two different transmission line structures used in a PCB layout. Microstrips and striplines also come in the coplanar and differential varieties, and all of these have certain advantages when used for high-speed or high-frequency signals. If you're looking for a thorough comparison of Read Article

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: Is FR-4 the Best Board Material Choice for High Speed PCB Design?

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: Is FR-4 the Best High Speed Material Choice for High Speed PCB Design? We’ve all been there at one time or another when we’re tasked with a project that lies outside our comfort zone. For me, that day came when my boss asked me to design a high speed board. While I considered myself to be a somewhat experienced PCB designer, I knew that high speed PCB design has many restrictions that you do not normally encounter when you’re designing an average circuit. Initially I invested time into making my schematics Read Article

Using Grounding to Protect Your PCB from ESD Damage: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites

Using Grounding to Protect Your PCB from ESD Damage: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: Using Grounding to Protect Your PCB From ESD Damage. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you think in the Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Guidelines: An Overview for Getting Started: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites

High Speed PCB Design Guidelines: An Overview for Getting Started: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: How Speed PCB Design Guidelines: An Overview for Getting Started. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you Read Article

Machine to Machine Communication and Internet of Things Can Benefit from Wireless Connectors

Machine to Machine Communication and Internet of Things Can Benefit from Wireless Connectors Have you ever bought a new gizmo or gadget and wondered how you lived a life before it? For me, smartphones obviously come to mind. When I was a kid I was content to play with sticks and rocks. Now my kids play with virtual sticks and rocks on their iPhones. High-speed wireless M2M connectors will be like that for the Internet of Things. Keyssa has developed a new short-range chip that operates in the 60 GHz band that they say will replace all Read Article

high speed pcb design guidelines

High Speed PCB Design Guidelines: An Overview for Getting Started One of the most common questions I receive from new designers and new hardware developers relates to the differences between high-speed digital designs and any other circuit board. Everyone naturally assumes the clock frequency defines the limit where we consider a design to be operating at high speed, but this is not the whole story. High speed designs can be identified by the presence of two common characteristics: The presence of standardized Read Article

Semiconductor Fiber Could Replace Fiber Optic Cable Transmission Lines

Semiconductor Fibers: What Will Replace Fiber Optic Cable Transmission Lines? The Internet is a strange and wonderful place. I grew up at the end of the age of dial-up Internet when chat rooms were all the rage. Now, I occasionally enjoy using the Internet to play some online games, which was impossible back then. My telephone router and its copper network could barely support enough bandwidth to load an image. Now our networks have been upgraded with blazing fast fiber optics. While these communication systems are Read Article