Live Webinar Altium Designer 17

Created: May 15, 2017
Updated: March 16, 2020

Recent Articles

Using an IPC-2221 Calculator for High Voltage Design

Using an IPC-2221 PCB Clearance Calculator for High Voltage Design Unsure of your conductor spacing requirements in high voltage PCBs? An IPC-2221 calculator can help. PCB design and assembly standards aren’t there to constrain your productivity. Instead, they’re there to help create uniform expectations of product designs and performance across multiple industries. With standardization comes the tools for compliance, such as calculators for certain design aspects, processes for auditing and inspection, and much Read Article

PCB power plane routing

Should You Route Signals in Your PCB Power Plane? Before you cut up your PCB power plane with signals, pay attention to things like impedance control power plane current capacity to ensure reliability. Read Article

Finding the Right Solar Solution for your Outdoor Embedded Devices

Finding the Right Solar Solution for your Outdoor Embedded Devices In this article Ari Mahpour reviews various solar power source options for your outdoor embedded devices Read Article

Don’t Get Caught Sleeping: Resolve PCB Power Distribution Problems

Don’t Get Caught Sleeping: Resolve Symptoms of Bad PCB Power Distribution in Networks and Designs I’ve got a heating problem at the moment—after 30 years of service to the various owners of this house, my furnace is finally throwing in the towel and no longer providing heat. Unfortunately, this has come at a, let’s say, inopportune time with it hovering just under freezing lately, and with nights being even more frigid. We installed an ad hoc heating system comprised of the gas fireplace and several space heaters; however, this is not a long Read Article

Optimizing Power Consumption

Power Consumption Optimization Power efficiency—energy efficiency if you’re a purist—has become perhaps the highest-profile aspect of system design. This is especially true for IoT applications where a device may need to operate for years on harvested energy or a cell battery. Thus, a critical stage of design is power optimization. Typically, the first stage of power optimization is setting the power budget. For example, the system spec might state that the device has to be Read Article

decoupling capacitor optimization

Decoupling Capacitor Optimization and Resources for Power Integrity Decoupling capacitor optimization is more than a buzzword, it’s all about selecting the right set of capacitors to keep power stable in your PDN. Read Article

Voltage Regulators and How to Plan Your Power Budget with PDN Analysis

Voltage Regulators and How to Plan Your Power Budget with PDN Analysis and Examples With my first buck regulator design, I had been given a power budget for the circuit block and I had to take into consideration what it was supplying and what topology I’d use. I considered efficiency to remove heat from the enclosure and I wanted to avoid using a heat sink. I also wanted a robust engine, a regulator to keep on working when the CPU, memory, and other utility circuits were exercising their might. I decided on the buck regulator Read Article

PCB Design Tips for SRAM Users: How to Prevent Data Loss

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

Power Integrity Analysis for Your Power Delivery Network

Power Integrity Analysis Services for Your Power Delivery Network Designing PCBs to have stable power output is as much an art as it is a science. Power integrity analysis and simulation is all about verifying a design will deliver the required power, but also that the delivered power will be stable. This idea that a power supply might not deliver stable power is not necessarily related to the power supply, it's related to the design of the PDN on the PCB. The structure of a PCB, the elements used to store and Read Article

Coupled Versus Uncoupled Inductors: Which is Right for Your Switching Power Supply?

Coupled Versus Uncoupled Inductors Procurement: Which is Right for Your Switching Power Supply? I recently took a deep dive into the various types of topologies surrounding switching power supplies. This article examined the benefits and downfalls of some of the most common topologies and aimed to assist you in the process of choosing how to power your design. The SEPIC topology is a very common switching mode power supply that can operate as both a Buck and a Boost converter. In other words, the SEPIC can act as a step-down (Buck converter Read Article

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