Skip to main content
Mobile menu
PCB Design
Altium Designer
World’s Most Popular PCB Design Software
CircuitStudio
Entry Level, Professional PCB Design Tool
CircuitMaker
Free PCB design for makers, open source and non-profits
Why Switch to Altium
See why and how to switch to Altium from other PCB design tools
Solutions
For Enterprise
The Last Mile of Digital Transformation
For Parts and Data
Extensive, Easy-to-Use Search Engine for Electronic Parts
Altium 365
Resources & Support
Explore Products
Free Trials
Downloads
Extensions
Free Altium 365 Tools
Online PCB Viewer
Resources & Support
Altium / Renesas Scheme: Information for Shareholders
All Resources
Support Center
Documentation
Altium Community
Forum
Bug Crunch
Ideas
Education Programs
Professional Training / Certification
University / College Educators
University / College Students
Webinars
Store
Search Open
Search
Search Close
Sign In
Signal Integrity
Main menu
Home
PCB Design
Collaboration
Component Creation
Data Management
Design Outputs
ECAD/MCAD
HDI Design
High Speed Design
Multi-Board
PCB Layout
PCB Routing
PCB Supply Chain
Power Integrity
RF Design
Rigid Flex
Schematic Capture
Signal Integrity
Simulation
Software
Altium 365
Altium Designer
Enterprise Solutions
PDN Analyzer
Upverter
Education
Programs
Altium Academy
Engineering News
Guide Books
Newsletters
Podcasts
Projects
Training Courses
Webinars
Whitepapers
FREE TRIALS
SPICE: Certainty for All Decisions
Design, validate, and verify the most advanced schematics.
Learn More
Signal Integrity
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
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
Read Article
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
DFSI: Stripline Differential Impedance Calculation Made Easy
As a PCB designer, you may hear your signal integrity overlords dictate controlled impedance with a specific value and tolerance. As someone who has requested these things, I know designers have trouble with implementing this in their trace geometry. This article details what impedance is, how it is calculated, and a practical way for PCB designers to determine the proper geometry for their application. When designing high-speed serial circuits
Read Article
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
Series Termination Resistor Calculation
With transmission lines, some things never seem to be simple. Determining the termination technique and the values of components in a termination network shouldn’t be a difficult task. Most PCB design programs force you to look online for calculators, or you’ll have to run the calculations by hand. Instead, your design software should make it easy to test a range of component values in your termination network. Some components, traces
Read Article
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 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
EMC and Signal Integrity with Dan Beeker
Learn about EMC and signal integrity in a really fresh way with expert Dan Beeker. Watch or listen to this podcast episode and learn about the importance of space in energy movement.
Read Article
Designing a 6-Layer PCB Stackup for Enhanced EMC
6-layer PCBs are an economical and popular stackup for a variety of applications with high net count and small size. Larger boards might work fine with a 4-layer stackup, where signal layers can be sacrificed to ensure isolation between each side of the board. With the right 6-layer stackup, you can suppress EMI between different layers and accommodate fine-pitch components with high net count. However, there are cases where it makes more sense
Read Article
DFSI: Overcoming Channel Loss
In a previous article , we established that loss is one of the primary signal integrity challenges to overcome. In this article, we’ll talk about the sources of loss, what you can do about them, and an often neglected aspect of loss. There are various options for reducing loss, in this article I’ll discuss how to: Change your architecture to orthogonal or cables Use better PCB materials with lower DF resin and smoother copper Add active repeaters
Read Article
How to Reduce and Remove Noise In Analog Signals From Your PCB
On my 12th birthday, I received my very own stereo system, complete with 4 speakers, a CD changer, and a tape deck. My parents found my taste in 80s hair metal pretty annoying, but I couldn’t get over the annoying hum coming from the speakers after a CD ended. Noise in analog systems, and analog noise in general, can present serious problems in a number of applications. Examples include systems for precise measurement, power systems, and radios
Read Article
Design For Signal Integrity
When we design PCBs, we start with setting up our Design For Manufacturing (DFM) rules in an EDA tool. However, it is likely that our Signal Integrity rules are the last thing we think about. In this blog, we’ll explore how to incorporate Design For Signal Integrity (DFSI) into our DFM routine. Design For Manufacturing Before discussing DFSI, let’s first review DFM criteria. The most driving criteria for DFM comes from the PCB’s IPC
Read Article
What You Need to Know About Choosing Embedded Modems for IoT
IoT enables you to control devices over the internet. If you grew up in an era where the Internet existed without Google, you may be as amazed as I am to see how far technology has evolved. It would have been beyond my wildest imagination to think about machines conversing intelligently on the Internet without much human intervention. Back when I was introduced to the online world, it took several minutes to simply load a single page of sports
Read Article
What is Carry Propagation Delay in High Speed Data Processing?
I sometimes get into text message conversations with friends that go completely haywire. It’s too easy to ask five questions back and forth in a single text, and trying to respond to everything causes our message chain to go completely out of sync. It isn’t until three text messages later that I actually respond to everything my friend asked, and by then we’ve moved on to a completely new topic. Signal delay between logic circuits in a PCB or an
Read Article
What is SRAM? PCB Design Tips and How to Prevent Data Loss
SRAM loses its data when power is removed. One of the best inventions in editing software is the autosave feature, which prevents Murphy’s Law from striking at the worst time. Decades ago, I nearly cried when several pages of an important university assignment were literally wiped out, as the non-existence of the autosave feature was made worse by my reluctance to hit the ‘Save’ button. In electronics, you risk losing the entire data stored in a
Read Article
The Need To Control Routing Impedance
The design approach of controlled impedance routing is a key ingredient of high speed PCB design, in which effective methods and tools must be adopted to ensure the intended high speed performance for your PCBs. So unless you carefully design your routes within your PCB, the impedance would be uncontrolled, and its value would vary from point to point throughout the trace. And because your PCB traces don’t act like simple connections at high
Read Article
Pagination
First page
« First
Previous page
‹‹
Page
11
Current page
12
Page
13
Page
14
Page
15
Page
16
Next page
››
Last page
Last »
Load More