As a general rule, when a design’s speed rises to more than a few hundred megahertz, it requires a PCB (printed-circuit board) with four or more layers. The only exception occurs when the design uses ...

Many readers are certainly familiar with the process for home-etching of PCBs: it’s considered very straightforward, if a little involved, today. This was not the case in my youth, when I first ...

Multi-layered printed circuit boards (PCBs) are typically preferred because they offer high signal intensity. Of all the multi-layered types, the 2-layer PCB is the most common, as it can accommodate ...

I enjoy seeing modules that can make designing other devices easier, and when I did a call for design reviews, [enp6s0] has submitted one such board to us. It’s a module called TinySparrow (GitHub), ...

Considerations for dividing analog and digital blocks. Decoupling techniques. Breaking down the board layers. How best to deal with grounding. Similar to building a house, it’s essential to create a ...

Every switch-mode power supply presents a wide-band noise source. Integrating a DC/DC converter from the car board net into an automotive control unit and still fulfilling the EMC requirements of ...

The diagram above is a typical PCB layout in Altium Circuitmaker software. The days of “electro” and “mechanical” being separate disciplines are long gone. Virtually all mechanical systems now come ...