V2x: Preparation, Placement and Process Control A module that lets a vehicle talk to other vehicles and to the road infrastructure is a radio product in a harsh environment. V2X module board design combines radio frequency layout with the electrical and thermal requirements of automotive electronics. What V2X Communication Does…

Thermal Via: Design Rules and Process Limits A power device does not lose its heat to the air. It conducts it into the copper pad beneath it, and from there into the planes and the other side of the board, where a heatsink or an airflow can remove it. On…

Phototransistor Interface Circuit Design A phototransistor is a photodiode with a built in current gain, which makes it far easier to use than a plain photodiode and slower than one. The interface is a load resistor and often an amplifier, and the choice of that resistor sets the sensitivity, the…

Battery Charger IC Board Layout for Switch Mode Charging A switching charger is a small converter with a battery on its output, and its layout follows the same rules as any switching supply. Charger ic board layout decides the efficiency, the temperature and the electromagnetic behaviour of a part that…

RS-422 Interface Circuit Design RS-422 is a balanced interface that carries a single signal in one direction over a pair of conductors. It is the simplex counterpart of the bidirectional bus that most people know, and it is still used where a one way link has to travel a long…

Mixed Flowing Gas Testing for Electronic Assemblies Salt spray measures resistance to chloride. It says almost nothing about what happens in an office, a data centre or an industrial cabinet, where the aggressive species are sulfur compounds and nitrogen oxides at concentrations far too low to see. Mixed flowing gas…

Smartphone PCB Design Feasibility and Routing Planning A handset board packs several radios, a display, cameras and a battery into a space smaller than a card. Smartphone pcb design is a planning problem before it is a drawing problem, because the routing capacity has to be proven before the layout…

Thermal Relief Design and Solder Wicking A pad that connects to a ground plane is connected to a great deal of copper, and that copper carries heat away from the joint during soldering. The result is a pad that does not reach the soldering temperature while its neighbours do, and…

LED Series Resistor Design for Strip and Indicator Boards A light emitting diode needs its current limited, and the cheapest way to do that is a series resistor. Getting the value right is arithmetic, but choosing where to put the resistor and how to rate it takes a little more…

Bare Board Test: Finding Opens and Shorts Before Assembly A bare board is tested before any component is placed on it, and the purpose is to catch the faults that fabrication can produce: a broken trace, a short between two nets, a missing connection to an inner layer. Finding them…