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The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

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PCB Design

Read the latest information PCB Design from the industry's leading experts.

Debugging Power Supply Noise to Reduce Signal and Clock Jitter Low level components need ultra-stable power, and high speed digital signals need to have repeatable edge transition times. The two aspects of digital signalling are related, and you’ll need to suppress all aspects of power supply noise to reduce jitter in a digital system. During a design debug, you’ll need to gather measurements throughout your board if you want to isolate and eliminate sources of power supply noise. Here’s how you can isolate Read Article

Transmission Line Impedance Measurement: Even vs. Odd Mode I still work on research in lasers, and pump-probe measurements are one way to examine how the electromagnetic field interacts with charge carriers in optical materials. With electronics, you won’t have to do anything as complex as a pump-probe technique for a transmission line impedance measurement. You’ll still need to examine how signals travel down a transmission line, and how they interact with the dielectric and load component. That’s just Read Article

How to Take a Phase Noise Measurement for High Speed Signals There are plenty of noise sources in your PCB, and phase noise can be one of those sources that is difficult to pin down in a real board. If you’re debugging a high speed board with high BER, then you’ll likely need to gather a phase noise measurement from the failing board section, or from your clock. Without getting too deep into the IC side of a system, phase noise may be an inherent property of the component you are using, such as the PLLs Read Article

PCB Trace and Pad Clearance: Low vs. High Voltage High voltage/high current designs carry safety requirements which need to be met by designers. Similarly, high speed designs need to have suppressed crosstalk in order to ensure signal integrity. The key design aspects that relate to both areas are your PCB trace clearance and pad clearance values. These design choices are critical for balancing safety, noise suppression, and manufacturability. The IPC 2221 standards provide guidance for Read Article

PCB Via Current-Carrying Capacity: How Hot is Too Hot? One common question from designers, particularly new designers that are learning about industry standards, is current-carrying capacity of conductors in a PCB. Trace and via current-carrying capacity are legitimate design points to focus on when designing a new board that will carry high current. The goal is to keep conductor temperatures below some appropriate limit, which then helps keep components on the board cool. While the recommended Read Article

Amplifier Stability at High Frequencies and Stray Capacitance Amplifiers are one of those critical components that make modern life possible. From wireless communication to power electronics, amplifiers need to run stably and predictably for these products to work properly. Stability analysis is one of my favorite topics in physics and engineering, and it always tends to crop up in places you would least expect. One of these places is in amplifiers. Any time-dependent physical system with feedback and gain Read Article

Near-field vs. Far-field EMI: What's Causing Noise Problems in My PCB? If you’re an antenna designer, then you’re likely familiar with all aspects of near-field vs. far-field radiation. Given the litany of radiated EMI problems that cause noise within and outside of an electronic device, one might suddenly realize their new product is acting like a strong antenna. To understand how EMI affects your circuits, it helps to understand exactly how near-field vs. far-field radiation from your PCB affects your ability to Read Article

The Great PCB Layout "Rules of Thumb" Debate Rages On To this day, I still see many PCB layout “rules of thumb” that first became common nearly 20 years ago. Do these rules still universally apply? The answer is a firm “maybe.” Many of the conversations you’ll see on forums regarding PCB design rules devolve into an always/never discussion, causing some designers to use or ignore common design rules in situations where they may not apply. In some cases, this will not cause a board to fail. As some Read Article

ADC Sampling Rate and Layout for Mixed Signal Boards Whenever you’re selecting an ADC, whether it is built into an MCU or as an external component, the sampling rate is a prime consideration, as it will determine how well you can reproduce a measured signal. RF applications, analog sensor boards, and other mixed-signal devices will need at least one ADC with an appropriately chosen ADC sampling rate. If you’re designing with a mixed-signal board, you’ll need to balance the required signal bandwidth Read Article

Sharing PCB Data with Manufacturers in the Cloud Once you’ve finished your new project and you’re ready to push it to your manufacturer, you’ll normally be stuck in an endless email chain with an engineer, or you’ll have to share cloud links with each other. Personally, I find the long email chains and long list of links overwhelming, especially when I have plenty of other tasks that require my attention. Sharing PCB data with manufacturers shouldn’t be a headache, it should be a seamless Read Article

Getting Started in Altium Designer | Changing the Rules! The Altium Designer environment is controlled by rules, which are created using a powerful tool called the “PCB Rules and Constraints Editor”. By creating rules before component placement and routing starts, Altium can warn you or prevent you from making mistakes, depending on how your preferences are set. If rules are changed midstream, Altium’s sophisticated Design Rule Checker can highlight violations based on the revised rules, and report Read Article

The EMC Doctor is in: Ken Wyatt on EMI and PCB Health The OnTrack Podcast welcomes Ken Wyatt (also known as ‘the EMC Doctor’). Ken is an EMC Engineer, a prolific author on EMI/EMC related topics, and an industry consultant. Read Article

Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT in Manufacturing When it comes to electronics, consumer devices like smartphones and Alexa tend to get all the attention. However, according to Alun Morgan at Ventec International Group, “about 23% of PCBs produced worldwide are used in electronics equipment for manufacturing applications.” The numbers only go up when you include other non-consumer categories that support manufacturing operations, such as automotive, telecom, power generation/distribution, and Read Article

Lane Recognition and Tracking with NVIDIA Jetson Nano Autonomous vehicles are slowly becoming an important part of the automotive industry. Many believe fully autonomous vehicles will soon be driving alongside humans, and technology companies are in a race to deploy fully autonomous vehicles. In December 2018, Waymo, the company that emerged from Google’s self-driving car project, officially started its commercial self-driving car service in the suburbs of Phoenix. Companies like May Mobility, Drive Read Article

Production-Grade Battery Modules for Raspberry Pi Zero I’ll admit, I’m a big fan of Raspberry Pi. This set of inexpensive boards packs plenty of general purpose computing power into a small form factor, it easily connects to a LAN/WiFi and is accessible via SSH, and its memory is easily expandable with a micro SD card. It’s also easy to get a new prototype embedded application up and running directly from your laptop. The one aspect that prevents its application as a production-grade embedded system Read Article

PCB Design Review and Collaboration in Altium Concord Pro Remote collaboration tools are everywhere these days, and now designers have access to a convenient collaboration system for electronics design. Whether you’re part of a design team, or you need to quickly execute any design changes recommended by your manufacturer, you need cloud collaboration tools that are immediately accessible within your PCB design application. Now with Altium Concord Pro, you’ll have access to a cloud-driven design Read Article

Differential Pair Length Matching: Best Practices for Signal Integrity Take two signals and send them down a parallel bus or differential pair. How can you be sure the downstream receiver will latch to your signals? If your signals don’t arrive at the same place and at the same time, then gates in your receiver won’t latch at just the right moment. This delicate balance can be like walking a tightrope across a cliff, and it can be difficult to maintain differential pair length matching by eyeing your trace lengths Read Article