Signal Integrity

Browse our library of resources to learn more about pcb design and signal integrity.

xSignals in Altium Designer Signal Integrity Stimulus Design Rules Basics of Signal Integrity Analysis

RF Signal Chain and Link Budget Basics for IoT

RF Signal Chain and Link Budget Basics for IoT Did you ever play the game Telephone as a kid? One person comes up with a message and whispers it into the ear of the next person. Messages get passed from one person to another, until the final message is announced and compared to the original. Sometimes, there’s a minor difference between the two messages, and other times, the message is lost completely. When sending a signal from an Internet of Things (IoT) device to a base station (or master Read Article

Multi-board Design, a discussion with Ben Jordan

Multi-board Design, a discussion with Ben Jordan Join Altium’s Judy Warner and Ben Jordan for a conversation on Multiboard PCB design. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: Show Highlights: Many different product areas are being impacted by developments in Electronics, opening new frontiers - beauty products, wearables Electronics are replacing things that traditionally were not electronics Electronics product development are increasingly driven by Read Article

PCB Chassis Might Keep Your PCB Design From Exhausting Itself

PCB Chassis Might Keep Your PCB Design From Exhausting Itself The world of racing is something that both fascinates and eludes me. On one hand, it’s thrilling to watch cars that have been fine-tuned to the most minute weight and aerodynamic requirements go flying down a road or around a track. On the other hand, from my experience, the majority of thrill from the sport largely comes from the accumulation of narratives and knowledge beforehand. I don’t care so much about actually watching the cars run smooth Read Article

Ground bounce in your PCB and ground bounce in signal integrity

Ground Bounce Reduction Techniques to Minimize Signal Integrity Issues Unlike my dad who thrived on the basketball team during his school days, I could barely bounce the ball during tryouts. Needless to say, I quit sports before I even started. While my dreams of becoming an NBA pro were dashed, I later discovered my passion for martial arts. I never really got into handling a basketball well, but in martial arts at least I could bounce off the balls of my feet to meet my opponent. Not being able to bounce the Read Article

Practice Makes Perfect: How to Test Electronic Components during PCB Design

Practice Makes Perfect: How to Test Electronic Components during PCB Design When I was younger, well much younger, I had dreams of one day being a pro athlete. I wanted to be the guy who scored the winning touchdown, knocked in the winning run or hit the buzzer-beater. Although I never made to the professional level, I did have some success and I learned a lot. The most important thing was the results you achieved were strictly tied to your preparation. In other words, if I wanted to do well in the game I had to test Read Article

Learning Current Density: Don’t Pop the Balloon

Learning Current Density: Don’t Pop the Balloon One area of PCB design that probably does not get the attention that it deserves is current density. Current density in a PCB trace is much like the pressure in a balloon. You want to squeeze as much air into the balloon as you can, but if you put too much: boom! The same is true of PCB traces many times. We want the traces to be as small as possible yet carry the most current possible, and if the trace carries too much: boom! For PCBs, that boom Read Article

Searching for Clarity: Signal Integrity Issues in PCB Design

Searching for Clarity: Signal Integrity Issues in PCB Design The clarity of TV signal transmission these days is amazing. I can still remember the days when I had a set of rabbit ears perched atop my 19” RCA. It was a challenge to position them just right to get the clearest picture, not to mention having to adjust them for every channel. Sometimes it’d take all night just to find the channel I wanted, so I’d sit down for five minutes and then head to bed. And if the weather was bad, forget about it. While Read Article

Backroads or Highway: Managing PCB Power Distribution with a PDN Analyzer

Backroads or Highway: Managing PCB Power Distribution with a PDN Analyzer Who hasn’t been caught daydreaming out the window, overlooking the lines of cars on the freeway at a standstill, wondering about easier or more effective ways of getting to your job on time? And even then, sometimes the alternate routes aren’t always the fastest—there could be road construction, or an event going on which makes you have to re-route even more. At that point, most tend to throw all hopes for getting to work on time out the window Read Article

Boats With The Current: Microstrip and Stripline Transmission Line Trade-offs

Boats With The Current: Microstrip and Stripline Transmission Line Trade-offs In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the narrator, Nick Carraway, is torn between infiltrating the notorious elite social circles by attending his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s infamous mansion parties in Long Island, New York and establishing himself on the east coast in a finance career. It can be easy to have an understanding of The Great Gatsby through its context - the roaring twenties, flappers, prohibition - it wouldn’t do justice to any of Read Article

Design for Electromagnetic Compatibility in PCB: Let Your Revels Never End

Design for Electromagnetic Compatibility in PCB: Let Your Revels Never End What if William Shakespeare worked as an electrical engineer instead of a poet and playwright? If electronics existed during the mid-to-late sixteenth century, the Bard may have studied the impact of electromagnetic interference (EMI) on circuits and the need for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). After all, he wrote about his fascination with noise in The Tempest: “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give Read Article

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: How to Eliminate Crosstalk

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: Techniques for Avoiding Crosstalk Recently at a wedding reception I was trying to talk to a gentleman who was sitting at the same table as me. Unfortunately there was a woman sitting between us carrying on a conversation with someone else sitting on my other side. With all the commotion of the reception in the background, conversation was difficult to begin with. Having another discussion taking place between us though made our conversation impossible. What we had was crosstalk Read Article

Omer Mahgoub from Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Africa and PCB Design for Astronomy

Omer Mahgoub from Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Africa and PCB Design for Astronomy Judy Warner: Omer, will you please share what the SKA is, what countries are involved, and what purpose it serves? Omer Mahgoub: The SKA (Square Kilometre Array) is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, with a total collecting area of 1 square kilometer and located on two continents (Africa and Australia). Organizations from 10 countries are members of the SKA: Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand Read Article

RF Interference Prevention and RF PCB Design in the Internet of Things

RF Interference Prevention and RF PCB Design in the Internet of Things Have you ever been to a party where there was so much noise you could barely hear yourself think? I’m a dedicated introvert, but sometimes my friends lure me out to such gatherings with promises that it will be “very relaxed.” They never are, and I don’t seem to learn. It’s times like those that I wish it was socially acceptable to wear noise-canceling headphones to such events. In the world of electronics, the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) Read Article

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: Is FR-4 the Best Board Material Choice for High Speed PCB Design?

Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: Is FR-4 the Best Board Material Choice for High Speed PCB Design? We’ve all been there at one time or another when we’re tasked with a project that lies outside our comfort zone. For me, that day came when my boss asked me to design a high speed board. While I considered myself to be a somewhat experienced PCB designer, I knew that high speed PCB design has many restrictions that you do not normally encounter when you’re designing an average circuit. Initially I invested time into making my schematics Read Article

What Causes Ringing on a PCB and How to Solve It: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites

What Causes Ringing on a PCB and How to Solve It: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: What Causes Ringing on a PCB and How to Solve It. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you think in the Read Article

How a Single Ground Connection Messed up 100 Units of MP3 Players

How a Single Ground Connection Messed up 100 Units of MP3 Players Technology is pretty great and it has definitely made certain things in life easier. However, when you’re juggling parenting, coding, electronics design and occasionally writing an article like this. Sometimes even the coolest apps can’t mitigate the stress we experience in a day. For example, this morning I accidentally mistook salt for sugar and mixed it into my child’s favorite porridge. One small mistake on my part and suddenly my 5-year-old Read Article

Semiconductor Fiber Could Replace Fiber Optic Cable Transmission Lines

Semiconductor Fiber Could Replace Fiber Optic Cable Transmission Lines The Internet is a strange and wonderful place. I grew up at the end of the age of dial up Internet when chat rooms were all the rage. Now, I occasionally enjoy using the Internet to play some online games, which was impossible back then. My telephone router and its copper network could barely support enough bandwidth to load an image. Now our networks have been upgraded with blazing fast fiber optics. While these communication systems are Read Article