Product category: Board-Level Instruments
News Release from: Gage Applied Technologies
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 7 May 2007
High-speed digitiser wins
PCB design award
The complexity of PCBs inside new high-speed digitisers is such that it won the Mentor Graphics Technology Leadership Award in the Industrial Control, Instrumentation, Security and Medical category
At Mentor Graphics' 19th PCB Technology Leadership Awards Contest to recognise printed circuit board (PCB) designer excellence, the Industrial Control, Instrumentation, Security and Medical category was won by GaGe won for the printed circuit board it designed for a new family of high-speed digitisers.
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The contest showcases the achievements of engineers and PCB designers who use Mentor's software to design state-of-the-art complex PCB systems.
This year's contest showcased a record number of submissions from countries around the world, including Germany, Switzerland, China, Norway, Singapore, Austria, Canada, Korea, India, Israel, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
GaGe's next generation of high-speed digitisers won for the complexity of its design.
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PCB design is a very critical component at such high speeds.
Trace matching, controlling impedance, and differential pair matching requirements are some of the design challenges GaGe engineers and designers faced.
The complexity of the routing, combined with signal integrity and grounding issues, were such that Mentor's simulation and design tools were used to their fullest extent.
Extensive testing and simulations were performed to validate each design step.
The board is comprised of 12 layers with split and mixed signal planes.
A split/mixed stack up design was used to optimise and meet the opposing needs of the analogue and digital sections.
A split plane and routing strategy was defined in order to reduce cross-talk between analogue and digital signal domains.
The design also has layer restrictions, class rules, trace length rules, differential pair rules and trace width per layer rules for controlled impedance.
Plane cutout areas and copper/trace keep-out areas were also a necessity for different design requirements.
Component height restrictions, component free areas, heat sinks, custom shields and high-density component packages are some of the physical challenges GaGe engineers and designers faced.
Mentor Graphics design tools allowed the GaGe team to efficiently design its latest complex, state-of-the-art, family of high-speed digitisers.
'Without these tools, manual routing of the CLK signals, differential pairs, and high-speed signals would have been very difficult and time consuming', says Chantal Holloway, GaGe PCB Designer.
'Given the complexity of this project, Mentor's design tools allowed us to achieve desired results quickly without impacting the schedule', Holloway adds.
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