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High-Speed Design
High-Speed PCB Design

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High-Speed PCB Design

8 Things you Need to Know about Copper 8 Things you Need to Know about Copper Copper roughness has an impact on high-speed digital designs. Choose your copper wisely. John Coonrod gives us pro tips when picking the most suitable copper to use on your next design. Read Article
EMI shielding techniques EMI Shielding Techniques You Can Use in Your PCB Design Software Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is such a problem that governments around the world have placed limits on the amount of EMI an electronic device is allowed to generate or receive. Your electronic device needs to be designed to prevent unintentional radiation and suppress conducted noise up to a very high-frequency value. This is not a simple matter of adding filtering on every circuit in your PCB layout, it’s about considering the entire Read Article
Signal Integrity for High-Speed Designs Importance of Signal Integrity for High-Speed Designs in Your ECAD Software Your PCB design software can help you create boards to ensure signal integrity in high speed designs. Learn more about how Altium can help you. Read Article
New Printed Circuit Engineering Course: PCE EDU New Printed Circuit Engineering Course: PCE EDU In this episode our guest Rick Hartley and Mike Creeden talks about the New Printed Circuit Engineering Course. Read Article
Transmission Line Reflection Coefficient Transmission Line Reflection Coefficient View a numerical example of the transmission line reflection coefficient and how simulations can help you understand the results. Read Article
How to Ensure PCB Impedance Control During Routing PCB Routing: How to Ensure PCB Impedance Control with Formulas and Resources High-speed signals and high-frequency signals both have one thing in common: the need for impedance-controlled routing on low loss, low dispersion interconnects. PCB impedance control can be difficult to achieve without the right set of routing tools and an integrated impedance calculator in your design tools. Most impedance calculators use a basic equation that does not accurately represent real traces on PCB substrates and does not correctly Read Article
Designing Physical Layer Security for Military PCBs in Altium Designer Designing Physical Layer Security for Military PCBs in Altium Designer PCBs for military systems are high performing beasts that must meet stringent design and performance standards. Military systems that store and process sensitive data require extra layers of security that goes beyond locking them in a secure enclosure. You’ll need to design your Printed Circuit Boards to be extremely resistant to EMI, route data so that it cannot be tapped passively, and include blacked-out chips to prevent attackers from Read Article
Transmission line fundamentals Transmission Line Fundamentals And Electromagnetic Fields, Part 1 Learn more about transmission line fundamentals and how they carry electromagnetic fields. Read Article
Circuit Board Design FR4 Dielectric Constant and Material Properties Wondering what is FR4? FR4 is by far the most popular set of PCB substrate materials. Here is how FR4 dielectric constant and your material properties will affect your next PCB. Read Article
How the Best Integrated PCB Libraries Lower Development Costs How the Best Integrated PCB Libraries Compare Electronic Components to Lower Development Costs With development schedules becoming tighter and technology advancing at an ever faster pace, designers and engineers need tools that help them cut development costs and stay competitive in every way. This means designers need supply chain tools that help them compare electronic component prices and manage their fabrication data in a single program. Each integrated library helps lower development costs and time by providing the supply chain Read Article
High-speed flex circuits Differential Signaling In High Speed Data Link Flexible Circuits As noted in many previous articles, due to high-speed and high data-rate designs, most modern products utilize differential signaling. If utilizing the right design protocols and design toolsets, handling differential signaling in standard, rigid PCBs is easily doable. But utilizing differential signaling in flex circuits creates another set of issues, questions, and design challenges. This article will address how differential signaling is Read Article
PCB Relay Selection, Design, and Layout are Easy in Altium Designer PCB Relay Selection, Design, and Layout are Easy in Altium Designer Circuit protection is vital for user safety and for protecting a board from electrical damage. Whether you’re working with a small, moderate power PCB or a large, high voltage electromechanical system, power surges or faults can destroy components and create hazards for users. The best way to ensure your next device remains safe from high voltage ESD or large current surges is to use a simple PCB relay. Compared to large relays that need to be Read Article
Spot Copper Connection Errors in Design Rule Checks Copper Connection Software: Instantly Check Every Connection With Rules-Driven PCB Design Tools It’s easy to find errors in most simple PCBs. Simply scan through your critical nets and trace each copper connection from source to load. Today’s printed circuit boards are not so easy to inspect and validate by eye. Even relatively simple low-speed boards can have hundreds of components packed into a small space, and it’s easy to get lost in a complex PCB layout. Today’s modern designs demand modern design tools. Altium Designer users have Read Article
Design RF PCBs With a Coplanar Waveguide Calculator Design RF PCBs With a Coplanar Waveguide Calculator RF PCBs can be complex boards that need careful interconnect design and layout. If you’re designing an RF PCB for microwave or higher frequencies, controlled impedance routing should be top of mind to ensure signal integrity. You can choose from many routing styles, but whichever routing style you choose, it should provide isolation against noise and crosstalk. A coplanar waveguide routing style is an excellent choice for RF PCBs as they can be Read Article
The Best High Voltage PCB Design Software Package The Best High Voltage PCB Design Software Package Of all the different boards a designer can create, a high voltage PCB design can be complicated and requires strict attention to safety. If not laid out correctly these boards can be safety hazards or can fail to function on first power up, leaving a designer with wasted time and effort. In the best case, the board will function reliably for a long period of time thanks to correct layout practices. When you’re planning your next high voltage PCB Read Article
media independent interface ethernet links Decoding Media Independent Interface (MII) in Ethernet Links Learn about media independent interface variants for routing Ethernet links, including gigabit variants for 1 GbE and faster links. Read Article
Making the Most of Your Crystal Oscillator Making the Most of Your Crystal Oscillator “Blindly” adopting what a crystal oscillator data sheet says usually results in adequate frequency stability. An oscillator requires the phase shift around the loop to be 360° and this total phase shift must be a precise and stable oscillation frequency. Read Article