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PCB Routing

Symmetric Stripline Impedance Calculators and Formulas

Symmetric Stripline Inductance or Impedance Calculators and Formulas In a previous article, we looked at the inconsistencies that can arise when using different calculators to compute the impedance of surface and embedded microstrip traces. Many of the same issues mentioned in the previous article apply to stripline impedance calculators. Symmetric striplines are easier to address than asymmetric striplines, both numerically and analytically. Here, we’ll give a short comparison of the various impedance formulas Read Article

Ethernet Layout and Routing Standards: MAC, PHY, and RJ-45 Connectors

Ethernet Layout Routing Guidelines: MAC, PHY, and RJ-45 Connectors Magnetics termination has little to do with actual magnets. Here are some important ethernet layout routing guidelines (MII, RMII, RGMII, etc.) to ensure signal integrity. Read Article

5G Antenna Tuning in Mobile and IoT Devices

5G Antenna Tuning in Mobile and IoT Devices 5G antenna tuning is like tuning a guitar as you play Guitar players know all about tuning their instruments. Whether swinging a whammy bar on stage or just ensuring each string hits the right note, this tuning changes that the resonant frequencies of each to the tone desired by the musician. To continue the recent series of articles on PCB design for 5G systems, one other aspect of designing RF design for 5G-capable wireless systems involves a Read Article

Changing PCB Reference Planes During Routing in Multilayer Boards

Changing PCB Reference Planes During Routing in Multilayer Boards Vias with annular rings for reaching an interior PCB layer If you’re a new designer and you take a look at some boards in common electronic products, you may not even realize they are multilayer boards unless you know exactly where to look. The fact is that more complex devices simply do not allow every single trace to be placed on a surface layer, thus signals must be routed within an interior layer in order to make the desired connections. With Read Article

Microvia Technology and Beyond for HDI Design

Microvia Technology and Beyond for HDI Design HDI PCBs, ultra-HDI, packaging, substrate-like PCBs, and highly advanced chip-on-board can all require microvia structures once electrical connections become very dense. In these designs, higher density chipsets and packages have driven the demand for more advanced fabrication capacity that can support microvias into advanced stackups. But in addition to microvias in standardized HDI stack ups, there are more advanced interconnects available for Read Article

48 New Snapping Options Enhanced snapping options allow for a smooth and controlled design experience for both routing and placement. Watch Video

Clearing Up Trace Impedance Calculators and Formulas

Clearing Up Trace Impedance Calculators and Formulas While it might not be obvious to the casual or to those who think the mathematics underlying PCB design is largely settled, there is plenty of disagreement regarding the right formula to calculate trace impedance. This disagreement extends to online trace impedance calculators, and designers should make themselves aware of the limitations of these tools. The Problem with a Trace Impedance Calculator If you use your favorite search engine to find Read Article

Datasheet Reliability with Ben Jordan

Datasheet Reliability with Ben Jordan In this OnTrack episode Judy Warner and Ben Jordan discuss about Datasheet Reliability. Can you trust them? And what does “Gilded” mean? This & more about verifying app notes. Watch the full episode. Read Article

PCIe BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing

PCIe Card Guides: BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing With all the chips that appear on a PCI or PCIe card, laying out and routing these boards might seem extremely complicated. However, the standardized architecture of PCIe provides considerable flexibility for designers. One issue that is a bit complicated is PCIe BGA fanouts for components on these cards. The trick to implementing a fanout and escape routing strategy is ensuring that you comply with the PCIe layout and routing specifications Read Article

Standard PCB Thickness and Your Layer Stack

Standard PCB Thickness and Your Layer Stack I’ll confess that I love 1990’s sitcoms. If Jerry Seinfeld were a PCB designer, he would probably ask “what’s the deal with the 1.57 mm board thickness?” It’s a fair question after all, and it makes you wonder why some standard values (e.g., 50 Ohms impedance in RF systems) are used in PCB design and other areas of engineering. There are good reasons why these and other design values have become in standardized in PCB design, even if they aren't Read Article

The Essential Tools You Need for PCB Design

The Essential Tools You Need for PCB Design Whether you’re building a house or building a PCB, you need the right tools in your toolbox. Every designer needs to have CAD tools for component placement, but even command line-based CAD software can be used for accurate component placement. With modern electronic devices becoming more complex at all levels, designers need tools that help expedite essential design tasks. Choosing the right set of PCB design tools requires weighing a number of Read Article

LVDS PCB Layout Guidelines

LVDS PCB Layout Guidelines for Ensuring Signal Integrity When you first get started in high-speed PCB design, you'll spend a lot of time encountering and understanding an alphabet soup of acronyms. MIPI, USB, PCIe interface, SATA PCB layout... the list of acronyms used to name high-speed digital interfaces is long. Low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) is an older interface that was standardized for differential data transfer at high speeds, but it remains in use today for a variety of imaging and Read Article

Routing topology configuration in PCB design

Routing Topology Configuration in PCB Design for Power, Data, and Peripherals Which PCB routing topology matches with which technologies? Take a look at this article to learn more. Read Article

Selecting FR4 Alternative Materials for Multilayer PCB Substrates

Selecting FR4 Alternatives of PCB Substrate Materials for Multilayer Boards You don’t have to settle for FR4 for your next multilayer PCB. Read more on selecting other PCB substrate materials. Read Article

All About CMOS, ECL, and TTL Propagation Delay in High Speed PCBs

All About CMOS, ECL, and TTL Propagation Delay in High Speed PCBs I still remember the 386 hand-me-down computer my parents gave me as a kid. It was useful for writing simple QBasic programs and spending hours playing computer games, but the computers of today leave my old 386 PC in the dust. With further development of computer architecture and the demands of more modern devices, the propagation delay in logic circuits becomes an important design parameter in a number of systems. In particular, TTL propagation Read Article

Tips for High Frequency PCB Design in Embedded Systems

Tips for High Frequency PCB Design in Embedded Systems Today's high-speed embedded systems incorporate diverse functionality, components, digital interfaces, and of course, wireless/RF signaling. If you're designing embedded systems with any level of computing power that also includes an analog front end, then you have multiple mixed-signal design challenges to overcome. Whether it's a simple sub-1 GHz radio connection, Wifi/BLE, or multi-gigabit Ethernet, embedded systems need some way to interface Read Article

PCIe Layout and Routing Guidelines

PCIe in PCB Design: Layout and Routing Guidelines Opening up a computer as a kid and staring at the complicated mess of card slots, chips, and other electronics on a motherboard always made me wonder how anyone could keep all the details about PCB layout straight. Learning more about PCB design for computer architecture and peripherals made me appreciate the dedication PCB designers have for building great electronic devices. Modern GPU, USB, audio, and networking cards can all run on the back Read Article