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

PCB Debugging: Tips, Tools, and Tricks

PCB Debugging: Tips, Tools, and Tricks There are some basic testing and PCB debugging steps you should take when your new prototype has some functionality and signal integrity problems. Read Article

Switchback Routing vs. Serpentine Routing for Maximum Density

Switchback Routing vs. Serpentine Routing for Maximum Density Choosing between switchback routing or serpentine routing means considering signal integrity and crosstalk in your board. Read Article

PCB Trace Inductance and Width: How Wide is Too Wide?

PCB Trace Inductance and Width: How Wide is Too Wide? Here’s how you can size your traces correctly and ensure they have sufficiently low PCB trace inductance. Read Article

Efficient PCB Routing Using Gloss and Retrace Tools The primary goal of your traces is to carry signals throughout your board without losses. To do this properly, you Watch Video

31:31 Transmission Line Impedance Calculation With Altium Designer 20 Today’s PCBs contain many transmission lines. Combine this with increased clock frequencies and data rates and the result is a critical challenge to high-speed design. Neglecting these dynamics can undermine product development by compromising performance, power consumption, EMC/EMI compliance, and more - leading to delayed design cycles and opening gaps that can be exploited by your competition. Hone your high-speed design skills by joining us as we discuss the typical transmission lines encountered in today’s designs, the PCB variables that affect impedance, as well as how to create, calculate, and design transmission lines in Altium Designer. Learn how to maximize the built in SIMBEOR® engine by Simberian to craft impedance profiles and manage transmission lines in your designs. This Live Webinar recording covers the following: Current trends in electronics development PCB transmission line model and impedance calculations Transmission line with specified impedance in Altium Designer Don’t pass up on this opportunity to experience the industry’s best in class design experience! Watch Video

Signal Integrity Evangelist Eric Bogatin, our Expert Insider to DesignCon 2020

Signal Integrity Evangelist Eric Bogatin, our Expert Insider to DesignCon 2020 Signal integrity expert, Dr. Eric Bogatin, joins us in this episode to talk about the upcoming DesignCon conference and expo that will be held in Santa Clara, CA January 28th through January 30th. Dr. Bogatin shares information about the presentations he’ll be giving; this includes a 2-part S-Parameter master class, speed training about understanding TDR measurements, and a session tackling tricks the experts use to get more out of their Read Article

Living on the Edge (Rate) Rise and fall frequency

Living on the Edge (Rate) — It’s All About Time and Distance The focus of this article is the clarify the origins of the phrase edge rate, what it really means relative to the design process and the best means for addressing it. Read Article

Should You Use Your PCB Power Plane as a Return Path?

Should You Use Your PCB Power Plane as a Return Path? Power planes and ground planes are important for more than just distribution of supplying power. When defining reference planes, both with impedance controlled routing and in managing return paths, your stackup might force return currents to pass into a PCB power plane before being coupled back to a ground layer. Even though you define a GND reference layer as a the basis for your impedance-controlled trace width, you still have to define a clear Read Article

The Case Against Orthogonal Trace Routing in Multilayer PCBs

The Case Against Orthogonal Trace Routing in Multilayer PCBs Can you spot the orthogonal trace routing in this complex board? Neither can I... I occasionally see questions on forums, some blog posts, and even application notes that continue to recommend the use of orthogonal routing, usually in 2-6 layer boards. When looking at application notes, I tend to default to Rick Hartley’s advice and try to think about this advice in context. Unfortunately, recommendations in application notes are not always taken Read Article

Reflecting on Your Design— What are Reflections and What Do They Do to a Signal? Part One

Reflecting on Your Design— What are Reflections and What Do They Do to a Signal? Part One In describing what happens when an electromagnetic field or wave is traveling on a transmission line, we often talk about the various things that can disrupt that wave. Among the most common of these things are reflections. Part 1 of this article will describe what reflections are and how they are caused. The second part will discuss what they do to a signal. Then, a separate article will address how reflections are controlled by terminations Read Article

The Fundamentals of High Speed SerDes Design

The Fundamentals of High Speed SerDes Design High speed SerDes design goes far beyond computer peripherals The challenges in high speed SerDes design filter right down to the PCB level and are all about backplane/daughtercard design, transmission line layout, selecting proper equalization schemes, and much more. This even gets down to the fundamentals, where stackup and power integrity become critical when driving transmitters and receiver ICs. If you’re designing a PCB as part of a SerDes Read Article

Some Pre-layout Power Spectrum Analysis Tips in Altium Designer

Some Pre-layout Power Spectrum Analysis Tips in Altium Designer Take advantage of your simulation tools before test and measurement. Here I want to expand a bit on the power spectrum analysis features in Altium Designer^®. In a previous post, we looked at working with simulations involving a frequency modulated signal fed into a nonlinear component (an NPN transistor). In this simulation, we ended with the Fourier spectrum at the load resistor for various values of base voltage/current. In the time-domain Read Article

DDR5 PCB Design and Signal Integrity: What Designers Need to Know

DDR5 PCB Design and Signal Integrity: What Designers Need to Know Development of the world’s first DDR5 RAM was announced just 1 year ago, with peak speed of 5200 MT/sec/pin (compare that to 3200 MT/sec/pin with DDR4) at 1.1 V. Full-scale production is set to begin in 2020, and demand for this new generation of memories with 8, 16, and 32 GB capacities will quickly outpace that for earlier generations. JEDEC rates DDR5 speeds up to 6400 MT/sec/pin, with bandwidth increased up to 300 GB/s. The faster speeds Read Article

Parasitic Extraction with an Electromagnetic Solver in PCB Routing

Parasitic Extraction with an Electromagnetic Solver in PCB Routing Keep your signals synchronized with parasitic extraction in your PCBs Parasitic extraction: the integrated circuit design community must grapple with this task on a delay basis, especially once gate features are reduced below ~350 nm and chips run at high switching rates. The PCB community also has to deal with this idea in order to better design power delivery networks, interconnects with extremely precise impedance, and properly quantify Read Article

High Speed Routing Guidelines for Advanced PCBs

High Speed Routing Guidelines for Advanced PCBs You can create this advanced board with these high speed routing guidelines for advanced PCBs Newer designs are continuing to get faster, with PCIe 5.0 reaching 32 Gb/s, and PAM4 pushing signal integrity and speeds to the limit. Proper interconnect design must account for the lower noise margins of advanced devices, impeccable power stability requirements, and much more to ensure signals can be received properly. With advanced devices running at Read Article

MIPI Physical Layer Routing and Signal Integrity

MIPI Physical Layer Routing and Signal Integrity MIPI physical layer routing (C-PHY) is typically used to connect these smartphone cameras to a processor. When most designers talk about routing standards, particularly for advanced devices, they typically refer to differential routing standards (e.g., LVDS) that enable high data rates. These signaling standards have proliferated computers, networking equipment, smart electronics, and other areas, and they have been critical for operating with Read Article

EMI from Heatsinks and What You Can Do About It

EMI from Heatsinks and What You Can Do About It Selecting the right heatsink can help you keep your system cool and prevent EMI. While it may not be obvious, or while most designers may not think to check, heatsinks can generate EMI when they are connected to a switching element. This is a common problem in power supply design, and whenever a heatsink is placed in contact with a component that switches with high current draw at high frequency. Reducing EMI from heatsinks requires balancing the Read Article