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Signal Integrity
Reading Impedance Profiles of High Speed Backplanes
Impedance remains a confusing topic in the signal integrity community. By definition, impedance is the ratio of voltage to current. That doesn’t really paint a clear picture to anyone. Getting more specific, the term impedance can mean several things. Step response of broadband reflection coefficient in ohms Impulse response of broadband reflection coefficient in ohms Time domain Z-parameters Frequency domain Z-parameters Signal Integrity
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77 GHz Radar for Automotive Radar PCBs: Routing and Signal Integrity
Technology moves quickly these days, and automotive radar has transferred from primarily operating near a 24 GHz to a 77 GHz wavelength shortly after its introduction into new vehicles for object detection. Recent regulation changes have allowed the transition to 77 GHz, which provides a number of benefits. Shorter wavelengths facilitate wider bandwidths, and provide better resolution, smaller device form factors, and longer range. This band just
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Relative Permittivity of PCB Substrates: High-k or low-k dielectrics?
The relative permittivity of water makes this pencil appear bent If you’ve paid attention to refraction, then you know something about the physics of relative permittivity. The semiconductor industry has managed to continue scaling to smaller technology nodes by using materials with high dielectric constant (so-called high-k dielectrics), but can you see similar benefits in your PCB with similar substrate materials? What about the use of low-k
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Damping and Reflection Transfer with a Series Termination Resistor
Trace, source, and load impedance matching are important in boards that contain transmission lines. To reach these conditions, you may see some designs that use a series termination resistor on single-ended transmission lines. The reasoning for doing this is sometimes to slow down a signal, or sometimes to set the driver's output impedance, depending who you ask. As surprising as it might be, the placement of series resistors for termination are
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Signal Integrity Simulations for Backplane Bus and Connectors
Modern embedded computing systems that interconnect a large number of modules in a single enclosure will probably need a backplane, and the buses connecting these systems run at multi-Gbps data rates. The connectors, PCB, and interfaces in total contribute to losses throughout the bus, and a system-level simulation will need to account for all of these elements to ensure a working design. As part of a design and verification flow, simulations are
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Backplane Routing Topology for Gigabit Copper and Fiber Networks
Backplanes are the backbone of modular computing platforms, providing a fabric that interlinks pluggable daughtercards in a single system. The design of backplanes must support interfaces on the daughtercards, often at high data rates reaching multiple Gbps. Some standards also specify system design requirements that support RF or fiber integration into these systems. The RF and fiber portion is normally integrated through a specialized connector
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Silicon Photonics Integration Challenges in PCB Design
Silicon photonics will use the same manufacturing processes used in silicon ICs I was honored to meet Richard Soref at a recent IEEE conference and discuss the current state of electronic-photonic integrated circuits (EPICs). The man is often called “the Father of Silicon Photonics”, and for good reason. If you ask him nicely, he’ll tell you how to build all the fundamental logic gates as photonic circuits directly on silicon. Now is a landmark
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Insertion Loss Deviation or Intersymbol Interference Noise?
In a previous blog , I discussed how channel quality is quantified by eye patterns [1]. There, it is explained how eye patterns are created from the thru S-parameters only. So, if you are using the thru S-parameters alone, do reflections even matter? Intuitively, it would seem like they don’t matter since they are not directly used to calculate the eye pattern. S-Parameters Still Matter But, of course reflections matter! Reflections cause signal
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How to Layout a Phase-locked Loop IC in Your RF PCB
As part of telecom systems, radio systems, and other RF devices requiring frequency synthesis, phase-locked loops play an important role in PCB design. High frequency transceivers and high speed digital devices contain integrated phase locked loops alongside an integrated VCO layout, which provides stable and internally controllable clock signals. However, some PLL ICs are available as discrete ICs, which will include an integrated VCO layout
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The Role of a Decoupling, Inductors, and Resistance in a PDN
What is the role of a RF decoupling capacitor? Do I need a decoupling circuit for my PCB? Some designers might overlook the role of a decoupling, inductance, and resistance when designing their power distribution network.
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Decoupling Capacitor Calculations: What Size Should You Use For Digital ICs?
Are these decoupling capacitors sized properly? Something that comes up repeatedly in PCB design guidelines, including high-speed digital design "gurus", is the need to find the proper decoupling capacitor size. This is sometimes addressed without a full understanding of what these caps are supposed to do in a PDN or their role in ensuring power integrity. I've also seen many application notes that default to the decades-old guideline of placing
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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
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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
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PCB EMI/EMC Guidelines: Meeting EMI/EMC Standards in Your Designs
What if you set two cell phones next to each other and suddenly neither of them worked properly? Thankfully, this doesn’t happen because designers and manufacturers made serious efforts to ensure these devices comply with EMC standards on conducted and radiated EMI. Any device should comply with EMC standards before it makes it to the marketplace. While this sounds complicated, you have a number of simple design strategies to help your next
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Kramer-Kronig’s Relationship to PCBs
The Kramer Kronig relationship is basically a way to go back and forth from the real and imaginary parts of a function. That’s it. So when someone says “blah blah blah must conform to the Kramer-Kronig relationship”, it’s a statement that is stating the obvious. Similar statements are, dogs must be part of the canine family and thus canis genus or petrol must have come from petroleum deposit on earth. Both correct and mildly interesting
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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
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Passive Intermodulation in PCBs for 5G Systems
5G networks are coming. Are your PCBs ready? Anyone pays attention to the top bar on their phone has noticed the 4G indicator. If you use a major wireless carrier in the U.S., you’ll likely see 5G in the top bar once you buy your next smartphone. 5G systems designers, especially PCB designers, will need to work with higher frequencies, faster data rates, lower power budgets, and plenty of other performance requirements. Nonlinearity will also
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