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RF Design for PCBs

Radio frequency (RF) designs operate at high frequencies, and they require careful layout and routing to prevent signal integrity problems. An RF PCB layout can sometimes contain a section with digital components, and careful layout can help prevent interference between RF and digital signals. Browse our library of resources to learn more about RF PCB design, layout, routing, and signal integrity.

RF PCB Design Overview Signal Integrity Power Integrity

Embedded RF Design: Ceramic Chip Antennas vs. PCB Trace Antennas Over the years, there’s been a large rise in café culture which has left many of the newer cafés looking for ways of adding a creative interest to their store. Café and bookstore hybrids, gourmet coffee with baristas that have an expertise over regional coffee beans, and even cat cafés have all been twists I’ve seen pop-up. When it comes down to it, people are going to cafés for a few key reasons though: to get a drink or snack, to meet and talk Read Article

Flexible Circuits: Getting Started Expert Tara Dunn tackles in detail the key benefits driving designers to use flexible materials. Read now to learn more. Read Article

How to Use Input Impedance in Circuits and Transmission Lines The concept of input impedance is used to understand power transfer and matching in complex interconnects. Read Article

What is RF Circuit Design? Learn more about what is RF circuit design and how to succeed at RF PCB design and layout. Read Article

Use the Best RF Design Software for High Frequency PCBs Designing radio frequency systems to support high frequencies and digital interfaces is challenging and requires the best RF design software tools. RF engineering in a high GHz band takes the best RF design software to ensure accurate PCB trace routing, layer stack design, and circuit design. Use Altium Designer for your RF design process and to take your next GHz band system to manufacturing. ALTIUM DESIGNER A unified PCB design application with Read Article

Serial Communications Protocols Part 5 - SPI In this next article in our series that is looking at different types of Serial Communication Protocols, we will be looking at the popular SPI protocol. This is one of many popular protocols in common usage that we will be looking at. We will provide a useful summary of each type’s advantages and disadvantages at the end of this series. SPI stands for Serial Peripheral Interface. It is a serial communication bus commonly used for short-distance Read Article

The Digital Engineer's Guide to RF PCB Layout and Routing Read our guide to learn some best practices for RF PCB layout and routing. We’ll also look at how simulation tools can help you evaluate your RF PCB layout. Read Article

What is a Balun and Does Your RF PCB Need One? Are you wondering what a balun is? Find out more and see where one fits into your RF PCB layout. Read Article

Circuit Board Design for In-Circuit Testing There are many types of circuit board tests available in electronics manufacturing today, each having unique goals and characteristics. This article presents guidelines at the design level (schematic and layout) to enable the use of in-circuit testing (ICT) fixtures to verify proper component assembly. These simple test fixtures allow your board to be tested as its assembled, which helps identify and remove failed boards from your production run Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: At Last...Engineering in the Cloud, RF Power Dividers and Brain Food - May 2020 OnTrack Newsletter May 2020 VOL. 3 No 12 Open Source Ventilator: Schematic to Fully-Functional in Thirty Days with Altium 365 ® On May 1, 2020, Altium 365 was released to the public, marking a historic day which represents an unprecedented shift in how electronics are designed and realized. With this cloud-based platform, design engineers can work from anywhere and connect with anyone--including all primary and secondary stakeholders. During the Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Rogers Corp Growth, RF Design and Brain Food - March 2020 OnTrack Newsletter March 2020 VOL. 3 No 10 Rogers Corporation: The Company Behind Top Performing Laminates If you design PCBs for high-speed digital, RF, Microwave or Millimeter Wave applications, you’re probably very familiar with Rogers laminates. However, did you know Rogers Corp has doubled in size in the past 10 years? Recently, while I was at IPC APEX Expo, I had the opportunity to interview Tony Mattingly, Sr. Product Manager and learn Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Engineering Stories, RF Design and Brain Food OnTrack Newsletter February 2020 VOL. 3 No 9 New Engineering Mini-Documentary Series: Altium Stories Too often, in the pursuit of healthy success and growth, it’s tempting for companies to talk about its products or services too much, and their customer’s success too little. While Altium may certainly fall into this all-too-common trap at times, we truly draw our greatest inspiration from innovative engineers like you, who are impacting the world Read Article

41:18 RF and Microwave PCB Design Part 2- Transmission Lines and Impedance - OnTrack Whiteboard Series Watch Video

OnTrack Newsletter: Cloud-based Design, RF and Design Tips OnTrack Newsletter December 2019 Vol. 3 No. 7 Altium 365: The New Frontier of Collaborative Cloud-Enabled Electronics Realization In this interview, we talk with Leigh Gawne, Chief Software Architect at Altium, to learn about Altium 365 and the impact he foresees that Cloud-enabled electronics realization will have on design engineers and the entire industry. (To see Leigh Gawne and team collaboratively design a board LIVE in Altium 365 at this Read Article

High Performance Sub 1GHz RF Project This week, I’m building a high-performance sub-1GHz transceiver that I want to use as a standalone Internet of Things node using the ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller. As with my other projects, this project is open source and published on GitHub for you to use as the basis of your own design, or to use as-is. The RF schematic and layout are production proven, as are the microcontroller schematic and all footprints on the board. However, do keep in Read Article

21:05 RF and Microwave PCB Design Part 1 - Fundamentals & Materials - OnTrack Whiteboard Series Watch Video

49:46 Basic Wireless Design with RF Modules - Wilson Watch Video