High-Speed PCB Design

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High-Speed PCB Design

PCB Stacking Techniques: Determine PCB Layers and Design an Elegant Layer Stack that Maximizes Signal Integrity Intelligent placement of PCB layers nullifies RF energy and results in PCAs that pass EMC on their first pass. Read on to learn about the best PCB stacking techniques. ALTIUM DESIGNER Professional PCB design tool with proficient PCB signal layer and stack-up management. Use inner layers with adjacent ground planes for clocks When considering how to determine PCB layers stack-up, the best practice is to prioritize signal integrity. Signal Read Article

Designing to Meet Thermal Demands with Altium Designer

Designers Meet Thermals Demands with Altium Designer Thermal demands from high power or high-speed components can have a major effect on the functionality of your PCB. Your design software has a major role to play in helping you create durable designs that can withstand and mitigate problems from heat generated in your PCB. When your design software contains simulation and verification features in a single interface, you can quickly identify hotspots and add elements like thermal pads to dissipate Read Article

DIY PCB Stencil Made Easy with Proper Board Layout Software

DIY PCB Stencil Made Easy with Proper Board Layout Software Fabrication, assembly, and manufacturing can all become a breeze so long as you’re using the proper PCB design software. Make sure that anything you use in those processes, like what is a stencil for PCB, is accounted for with your CAD tools. In this article, we are going to explore what is stencil in PCB and the types of stencil for PCB. ALTIUM DESIGNER PCB design software is responsible for enabling your designs to be produced with ease. The Read Article

Precision PCB Design Software with a Differential Line Impedance Calculator

Precision PCB Design Software with a Differential Line Impedance Calculator Altium Designer’s differential line impedance calculator will set up your impedance-controlled differential pair routing widths for you. ALTIUM DESIGNER For better impedance control, use PCB design software you can trust. One thing is for sure: When you are routing a high-speed PCB design you are going to be working with impedance-controlled routing and differential pairs. There have been trace routing tools available for a long time that help Read Article

How to Design Your PCB Test Coupon and What You Can Test

How to Design Your PCB Test Coupon and What You Can Test As the operating speed of components has increased, controlled impedance is becoming more common in digital, analog, and mixed-signal systems. If the controlled impedance value for an interconnect is incorrect, it can be very difficult to identify this problem during an in-circuit test. Minor mismatches may not cause a board to fail, but it can be difficult to pinpoint incorrect impedance as the cause of any test failure, especially if correct Read Article

High-Speed Signal Routing: The 5 Important Routing Constraints

High-Speed Signal Routing: The 5 Important PCB Design Constraints Your modern digital board is most likely classified as high speed, regardless of whether you looked at the datasheets for your components. Designing your board successfully will take some important steps when you begin your design. Aside from floorplanning and stackup design, your routing strategy will need to operate within some important PCB design constraints. After you capture your schematic as an initial layout and create an initial Read Article

Understanding PCB Copper Thickness in Altium Designer

Understanding Copper Weight and Thickness in PCB Design At one time it was a simple process for printed circuit board designers to get their design manufactured. Board sizes and layer stacks were more generic, and usually, someone else made all the hard layer configuration choices for you. It is a completely different game now with multi-layer PCB designs ranging from two to over thirty layers. In addition, trace widths, ground planes, hole sizes, substrate materials, characteristic impedance Read Article

Fundamental Approach to PCB Antenna Design

The Best PCB Antenna Design Software Eases Antenna Implementation Circuit Board antenna design can be a difficult task for any software; however, that shouldn’t be a problem for Altium Designer, which can serve as your go-to BLE antenna design software and much more. ALTIUM DESIGNER Ensuring that your antenna designs are placed without issue Consumer and industrial demand have prompted the demand for smaller wireless devices. The devices support wearable technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) applications Read Article

The Best EDA Software for PCB Design

The Best Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Software for PCB Design You don’t have time for underperforming electronic design automation (EDA) tools that are difficult to learn and use, you need the best EDA software for PCB design automation that you can get; Altium Designer. But what is EDA software? ALTIUM DESIGNER The most powerful, modern, and easy-to-use EDA simulation software or electronic design automation software for professional use. You’ve got a job that needs to be done and that means the printed Read Article

PCB Temperature Won’t Overheat with Smart Checking Design Software

PCB Temperature Won’t Overheat with Smart Checking Design Software Board integrity can be compromised without a conscious effort by the designer to mitigate high temperature board areas. Heat management can help keep your board from catching aflame. ALTIUM DESIGNER The right board design software will go a long way in high-speed designs and beyond. The emphasis on achieving smaller product footprints has pushed multi-layer PCB designs toward higher component densities. As a result, the application of better Read Article

Propagation Delay Calculators in High-Speed PCB Design

Propagation Delay Calculators in High-Speed PCB Design Propagation delay becomes an important consideration in high-speed PCB design. You’ll need to make sure that your signals remain synchronized throughout your board in order to prevent skew. A PCB design package that incorporates a propagation delay calculator as part of your design rules makes it easy to compensate for propagation delay, allowing you to focus on routing and signal integrity, rather than manually adjusting traces and calculating Read Article

Round and Curved PCB Design in Altium Designer

Round and Curved PCB Design in Altium Designer Our modern lives would not be possible without electronics. Sometimes it seems like a race to be the first person to wire everything in your house onto PCBs. With the multitude of possible device shapes and sizes, circular or rounded PCBs are becoming more popular. If you want to design your next device on a round PCB, your design software needs CAD and layout tools that don’t constrain you to working on rectangular PCBs. When you work with Read Article

Length matching with differential pairs is like walking a tightrope

Differential Pair Length Matching: Best Practices for Signal Integrity Conceptually, differential pairs are very simple, being just a pair of equal and opposite polarity signals running on two parallel conductors. In terms of signal integrity, differential pair routing becomes progressively more difficult when frequencies get higher. At the low end of the possible range of rise time values and frequencies, timing is the main constraint, while at faster rates we see issues with skew, mode conversion, and bandwidth Read Article

Interactive differential pair length tuning in Altium Designer

How to Perform Differential Pair Tuning in Altium Designer In order to properly suppress common-mode noise, differential pairs should be routed in parallel with symmetry and matched lengths. Today's CAD tools make it easy to come close to all three objectives, but only if you have the right design tools. Instead of eyeing out your different pair lengths, the interactive routing tools in Altium Designer make differential pair length matching easy. You can encode permissible length mismatches as design Read Article

Differential Crosstalk and Spacing Between Differential Pairs

Differential Pair Spacing and Crosstalk in PCB Design Differential crosstalk causing problems in your signals? Here’s how differential signals produce crosstalk and how you can ensure differential signal integrity. Read Article

Switchback Routing vs. Serpentine Routing for Maximum Density

Switchback Routing vs. Serpentine Traces Routing for Maximum Density Choosing between switchback routing or serpentine routing means considering signal integrity and crosstalk in your board. Read Article

PCB Trace Inductance and Width: How Wide is Too Wide?

PCB Trace Inductance Calculation: How Wide is Too Wide? Here’s how you can size your traces correctly and ensure they have sufficiently low PCB trace inductance. Read Article