Military and aerospace PCBs must adhere to intensely high standards to ensure their safety and functionality in the extreme conditions they’re used in. For this reason, PCB design for military and aerospace applications requires incredibly stringent guidelines with built in redundancy, extra safety, and stringent tolerances, minimizing risk of failure
Copper current density refers to the amount of continuous current going through a copper wire —whether on a circuit board as a trace or not. According to the principles of Joule or Ohmic heating (represented as VI or I²R), any material that conducts electricity will generate heat, leading to a gradual rise in temperature in both the conductor and its surrounding environment.
When designing a printed circuit board (PCB), engineers often focus on ensuring the correct impedance structures and electrical performance of the board. However, the physical characteristics, such as PCB thickness, are equally important and can significantly impact the cost, manufacturability, and performance of the final product. While standard PCB thicknesses are widely used, they are more of a convention than a strict requirement, offering designers an opportunity for optimization, especially in high-volume production.
The primary challenge of this project was ensuring that the high-frequency PCB maintained extremely low attenuation and distortion during signal transmission while preventing external interference from affecting signal quality.
PCB layout planning is a critical phase in the design process, enabling engineers to save time and ensure a structured approach to package management, component placement, and routing.
kups is one of the most critical aspects of HDI PCB design. Vias in HDI PCBs offer greater flexibility compared to standard boards, but they also significantly impact manufacturing costs and reliability.
According to Joule or Ohmic heating principles (represented as VI or I²R), any conductive material generates heat, leading to a gradual temperature rise in both the conductor and its surroundings. Managing copper current density is critical to ensure reliable PCB performance and prevent overheating. This article explores key considerations, design guidelines, and tools like OrCAD X to optimize copper current density in PCB designs.
As high-density interconnect (HDI) designs with larger layer counts become more prevalent, the use of microvias is increasing. In builds with 3+N+3 or larger configurations, sequential lamination now often relies on skipped vias, staggered microvias, and stacked microvias
PCB Processing The precise dimensions required for millimeter-wave circuits demand well-controlled PCB processing techniques to produce circuits with consistently excellent performance. Variations in copper plating thickness and final surface treatment on the conductor surface can impact the performance of millimeter-wave circuits. To ensure the successful fabrication of high-performance millimeter-wave circuits, both of these processes must […]
From anti-collision radar systems used in autonomous vehicles to the fifth-generation (5G) high data rate New Radio (NR) networks, the application of millimeter-wave (mmWave) circuits is growing rapidly. Many applications are pushing the operating frequency bands to higher frequencies (such as >24GHz).