High-Speed PCB Design

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High-Speed PCB Design

Use PCB Routing Tools With an Integrated Trace Length Calculator

Use PCB Routing Tools With an Integrated Trace Length Matching Calculator If you’re a mechanical or electrical designer, you need CAD tools that provide accurate trace length and geometry calculations. Once you start working with high-speed or high-frequency circuits, propagation delay and skew become critical points to consider as you need to make sure your signals are properly timed throughout your nets. Altium Designer is the only PCB design package that includes an ultra-accurate trace length calculator for PCB Read Article

Comparison of PCB Material Properties for High Speed Design and HDI Boards

Comparison of PCB Material Properties for High Speed Design and HDI Boards Looking for a PCB material comparison chart? Take a look at our comparison of PCB material properties for your next high speed or HDI PCB. Read Article

The Best Schematic Design Program for PCBs

The Best Schematic CAD Software for PCBs PCB design begins with a schematic, where you turn your design ideas into working circuits. When you use the right schematic design editor program to create your circuit boards, you can design and simulate your board in a single program. Once you use integrated schematic capture, you can start your circuit board layout and create real circuit boards. Altium Designer is widely considered the best schematic software in this regard and gives you all Read Article

How to Build a Circuit Board With Altium’s PCB Design Software

How Are Circuit Boards Made With Altium Designer Your printed circuit board (PCB) design might be designed to work correctly, but you also need to make sure it can actually be manufactured. Although a PCB manufacturer will fabricate and assemble your circuit boards for you, making sure your designs are manufacturable is about encoding DFM specifications in your design rules. With the rule-driven design features of Altium Designer, you can encode DFM specs into your PCB’s design rules; this Read Article

1:44 Look No Further than Altium Designer for the Best PCB Design Software When it’s time to buy new PCB design software, you only want to buy the best of the best, and you’ll probably look through a PCB design software list to find the tools you need. Open source software carries zero price tag, but it simply isn’t capable of tasks professionals need to perform every day. If you’re considering a new PCB design software package, consider this first. You need all the tools the industry demands, and there is no reason to Watch Video

The Best PCB Design Software Features a PCB Trace Impedance Calculator

The Best PCB Design Software Features a PCB Trace Width and Impedance Calculator PCB trace width, pad, and via features are some of the most important aspects of your circuit board's performance and need to be carefully designed. The right cross-sectional PCB trace area and distance to the nearest reference plane will ensure your PCB trace impedance is consistent throughout your board. It can also help suppress temperature rise if your board operates at a high current. Choosing the right trace dimensions involves balancing Read Article

PCB impedance calculator

PCB Stackup and Trace Impedance Calculator in Altium Designer There are many demands placed on PCB stackup design. High-speed designs carry a requirement for controlled impedance, crosstalk control, and the need for interplane capacitance. Impedance in your traces becomes a critical parameter to consider during stackup design for high-speed PCBs, but the stackup will also influence crosstalk susceptibility and sheet capacitance between ground and power planes. While you can work out many of these details by Read Article

The Best High Speed Design Tools in Altium Designer

The Best High Speed Design Software Tools in Altium Designer Building your next high-speed PCB takes the best design and analysis tools. Your high-speed design tools should make it easy to route connections, place components, and design your stackup in a way that ensures signal integrity and prevents unintended crosstalk. Your analysis tools should help you identify problem areas in your PCB, and your design tools should help you quickly implement redesigns in your PCB. With the high-speed PCB design Read Article

Differential Microstrip Routing

Routing Differential Microstrip Traces with Controlled Impedance Differential microstrip routing in high speed PCB design requires careful impedance calculations. Altium Designer incorporates these features into its CAD tools. Read Article

Return loss vs. reflection coefficient

S11 Parameter vs. Return Loss vs. Reflection Coefficient: When Are They the Same? What is the difference between return loss vs. reflection coefficient and the S11 parameter? We’ve got your answers in this article. Read Article

Integrated circuit CMOS load capacitance

How Load Capacitance on a Transmission Line Affects Your Signals If you ever read about transmission lines and integrated circuit datasheets, there is this seemingly mysterious quantity called load capacitance. This value depends on the geometry of the component lead connected to the transmission line, as well as the substrate material and distance to the reference plane on the integrated circuit die. When working with transmission lines, the load capacitance of a component has some important effects on signal Read Article

Ethernet cable Bob Smith termination

Bob Smith Termination for Ethernet Circuits: Is it Correct? Common-mode chokes in Ethernet circuits use Bob Smith termination, but is it the right choice for sinking common-mode noise? Read Article

Backdrilling

Backdrilling in PCB Design: An Easy Way to Improve Via Signal Integrity Backdrilling in Altium Designer is one of the easiest ways to improve via signal integrity. Read on to learn about back drilled vias and more. Read Article

Difference between data rate and bandwidth

Data Rate vs Bandwidth: What's the Difference? What is the difference between data rate vs bandwidth? This topic has been obfuscated for the last 30 years. Here’s how they relate. Read Article

What is impulse response function Fourier transform

What are Impulse Response Functions? You can get a transfer function from a simulation, but what is an impulse response function? Learn more in this article. Read Article

Through Thick And Thin — How Do You Get High Current Into a High Speed PCB?

Through Thick And Thin — How Do You Get High Current Into a High Speed PCB? The typical large currents in today’s high speed PCB designs require a different approach. This article will describe the stackup requirements associated with these very large current PCBs and how to design them so that they can be readily manufactured properly. Read Article

Modeling PCB Interconnects as Causal Systems

Modeling PCB Interconnects as Causal Systems Real PCB interconnects are causal systems and must be modeled with the correct time-dependent behavior. Read Article