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Thought Leadership
Automotive Telematics Systems Design
In 2015, the cost of the electronics in a new car surpassed the cost of raw steel for the first time in history. We shouldn’t be surprised; the increasing number of electronic systems placed in cars over time made this change in cost structure inevitable. As cars become more autonomous, more connected, and include more creature comforts, this trend is only going to continue. After the OnStar system was popularized by General Motors in the 1990s
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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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Automotive Software Engineering: The Race to Hire Embedded Software Engineers
Embedded software engineers will take a new place of prominence in the automotive industry The current economic climate in the US is humming along and has been primarily driven by growth in the tech sector. Everything from consumer electronics, SaaS, and advanced manufacturing are helping drive growth. The electronics portion of the automotive industry is not typically seen as sitting at the cutting edge of new technology, until you look to the
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Chirped Automotive Radar Sensor Systems Design and Analysis
Thanks to the German inventor Christian Huelsmeyer, radar has been around since 1904, the year he patented his telemobiloscope. This simple radar device could detect ships up to 3000 m away and operated at wavelengths from 40-50 cm with a separate receiver antenna. The device could only be used to determine the presence of a distant object, but later versions could be used to calculate range. Today’s semi-autonomous vehicles, and upcoming fully
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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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Why and How to Use an Aluminum PCB Substrate for Your Next Stackup Design
Aluminum can be used for more than just soda cans I don’t drink soda so much anymore now that I’m in my thirties, but I know aluminum has plenty of uses outside of making coke cans. One use is in the core of your PCB as a material for thermal management. Aluminum has high thermal conductivity and can be used to carry heat away from active components on a PCB when other passive or active cooling measures cannot bring component temperatures to a
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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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Advanced PCB Library Management
A previous article from Altium’s PCB design blog showed everyone how to get started with integrated PCB library management. In the previous article, you can get a look at creating an integrated library project and how to compile schematics and PCBs into their own libraries. You can then take schematic libraries and your PCB libraries and compile them into an integrated library. This allows you to package sets of important design and component
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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AutoRouter and Massive Potential for Routing Ease
I once owned a little pop-up tent trailer, and hooking it up to my car was a very involved process. My wife would use a combination of hand signals and shouted instructions to guide me in as I moved the car back and forth in order to position the hitch perfectly under the trailer coupler. One day my father in-law-was helping me and I started my lengthy explanation to him of the hitching process. Without saying a word he simply reached down
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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
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Comparing Electronic Prices with Supply Chain Visibility
Thankfully, I’m no longer a broke college student that has ramen every other day for dinner. But the spending and budgeting habits I developed during that period of my life have stuck with me and served me well into adulthood. I’m not eating ramen anymore, but I still keep an eye on my monthly budget. If you’re considering which components to include in your next PCB and are trying to formulate a production budget, you’ll need access to supply
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Impedance and PCB Etching: Utilizing Altium Designer for Your Board Needs
Today’s high-speed PCB designs require that the design engineer take charge of how the circuit board will be built. There was a time where PCB construction specifics were handled by manufacturing engineers in another department, or even in another company. How the board was built up didn’t have an important effect on the signal performance, and the purpose of the design team was to simply create electrical circuitry that performed the function
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Preparing for Manufacturing with PCB Panelization Software
If you work in manufacturing or you plan to produce a new product, productivity is the name of the game. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the focus has been producing more widgets per man hour, and PCBs are no different. When you’re bringing a new product to market, why pay more for your order than you need to? One way to improve productivity in a PCB manufacturing process is to use the proper panelization scheme. If you have the right PCB
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