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    PCB Design

    PCB Design

    Read the latest information PCB Design from the industry's leading experts.
    EMI from Heatsinks and What You Can Do About It Selecting the right heatsink can help you keep your system cool and prevent EMI. While it may not be obvious, or while most designers may not think to check, heatsinks can generate EMI when they are connected to a switching element. This is a common problem in power supply design, and whenever a heatsink is placed in contact with a component that switches with high current draw at high frequency. Reducing EMI from heatsinks requires balancing the Read Article
    Some Techniques for Suppressing DC-DC Converter EMI in IoT Products This Li ion battery is most likely connected to a switching regulator to provide stable power. Suppressing EMI susceptibility in IoT devices from various sources is critical to ensuring your new product will work as designed. Similarly, your IoT product should limit spurious emissions if you want it to comply with EMC regulations. Among the various sources of radiated EMI from your next product, EMI within the device itself should also be Read Article
    Load Line Analysis for Nonlinear Circuits in Altium Designer Before creating a layout for your nonlinear circuits, you should run a load line analysis so it doesn't end up like this If you’re in the business of analog circuit design, then you’ll likely need to run simulations of your system to determine its functionality. Linear systems are rather intuitive, even in the case where strong feedback becomes an important determinant of stability. With nonlinear circuits, this can get more complicated, and it’s Read Article
    A Retro-Computing Christmas Sinclair 48K ZX Spectrum computer (1982) (Image source: Bill Bertram/Wikipedia) It's starting to look a lot like (a retro-computing) Christmas. I understand why many younger readers cannot imagine a world before today's incredibly powerful computing and gaming systems with their high-resolution graphics subsystems. We all enjoy these systems, but those of us who are more... let's say "seasoned"… remember the raw excitement we felt just to own any Read Article
    Splitting Planes—The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Splitting planes or making plane cuts is another one of those technical issues wherein there is a lot of conflicting information. Some say it’s a good thing to split planes; others say you can make plane cuts in both ground and power planes, some say you make cuts only in power planes, and others say to avoid plane cuts altogether. This article will debunk the myths surrounding split planes, provide evidence as to when they are useful, and Read Article
    Non-functional pads—what are they and what problems can they create? In previous articles on my blog, I have stated that non-functional pads should always be removed from PCB artwork, but I have not gone into detail as to why this should be the case. In the industry at large, there is some confusion about these pads and whether or not they serve a useful purpose. In this article, I will define what they are, how their use originated, the problems they can create and why they should be removed from PCB artwork Read Article
    Geeky Holiday Gift Ideas The holiday season is coming! I asked both the Altium community and my Altium Library community what geek gifts they are looking for, and I’ve added some of my own for the first ever Altium Geek Gift Guide! This is mostly for electronics geeks, but there should be something for everyone! There are so many amazing geek gifts out there it would be impossible to cover them all, so I’ve tried to keep to community suggestions. I then added just a few Read Article
    Plated Through-Hole Vias in mmWave PCBs Should you plate your through-hole vias in mmWave PCBs? Recently, I received a question from a designer at a startup wondering about proper use of plated through-hole vias in mmWave PCBs. It got me thinking that I neglected to mention this point in a previous blog post, although space in these posts can be limited. This is a fair question, both when dealing with microwave/mmWave frequencies, and when working with high speed digital signals. At Read Article
    Calculating your Fabrication Capability Coefficients People have long asked me, “How do you know if a fabricator is capable of manufacturing my boards?” First, I tell them to ask for an IPC PCQR2 Report. If that is not available and there is no time or money to go through the process, then calculating the Fabrication Capability Coefficient is a good ‘second-best’. Fabrication Yields The Fabrication Capability Coefficient (FCC) is computed from a fabricator’s electrical test data, their First Pass Read Article
    High Performance Sub 1GHz RF Project This week, I’m building a high-performance sub-1GHz transceiver that I want to use as a standalone Internet of Things node using the ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller. As with my other projects, this project is open source and published on GitHub for you to use as the basis of your own design, or to use as-is. The RF schematic and layout are production proven, as are the microcontroller schematic and all footprints on the board. However, do keep in Read Article
    Pad Stack Design And Fine Pitch Components, Part 2 What happens when you try to route two traces between pins on 1mm and below pitch BGAs? In Part 1 of this article, I reviewed the various aspects of unplated holes in the pad stack and what is needed to calculate the complete dimensioning of the finished hole size of the plated through-hole. Within this article, an analysis was done to determine how much room there was for traces between BGAs with a pin spacing of 1 mm on high layer count PCBs Read Article
    SMPS Circuit Design: Which Switching Frequency to Use? Power supply on a network switch Power electronics and switched-mode power supply (SMPS) designers should know that working with higher switching frequencies can lead to higher switching losses in your system. However, the push to miniaturize power supplies, and the components that go into them, compels designers to work with higher switching frequencies in their SMPS circuit designs. This then creates problems where switching losses and noise Read Article
    Frequency Modulation Simulation in Altium Designer This microwave mixer can be examined in a frequency domain simulation in Altium Designer When working with analog signals, you need to ensure your device is operating linearly in order to prevent problems like harmonic distortion during operation. Nonlinear interactions in analog devices lead to distortion that corrupts a clean analog signal. It may not be obvious when an analog circuit clips just from looking at your schematic or datasheets Read Article
    PCB Trace Width vs. Current Table for High Voltage Design Keep your board cool with our PCB trace width vs. current table Copper is a strong conductor with high melting point, but you should still do your best to keep temperatures low. This is where you’ll need to properly size trace widths to keep temperature within a certain limit. However, this is where you need to consider the current flowing in a given trace. When working with a power rail, high-voltage components and other portions of your board Read Article
    WifiWall Technology Protects Against Cyberattacks Do you travel a lot? If so, do you use your smartphone, tablet, or notepad computer in airports or hotels? Even if you aren't a road warrior, do you use any of the aforementioned devices in public places like coffee bars? WiFiWall 5.0 Traveler (Image source: WiFiWall.com) In my case, I would answer with a resounding "Yes" to all the above. Of course, just about everyone these days knows that public Wi-Fi is subject to nefarious folks mounting all Read Article
    A Comparison of NVIDIA’s Embedded AI Computing Platform Options Each new embedded AI computing platform blurs the lines between man and machine... When I first got started with machine learning applications, specifically text classification and sentiment analysis, I was working with an eCommerce client building everything onto a web server. Given the huge amount of data we continue working with on a daily basis, it only made sense to build our platform on a dedicated server. For some AI applications Read Article
    Python Dragging Students into STEAM CodeBot. Image source: Firia Labs I have a friend. It's true. I'm not joking. Settle down. Look -- I'm not going to continue until you cease squirming in your seat and stop giggling. That's better. Now, if you're quite finished, we'll continue. We'll call my friend David (because that's his name). David is one of the cleverest guys I know. He has a size-16 brain -- the type with the go-faster stripes painted down the side. He has expertise with Read Article