Design technology of accelerating the assembly speed of printed circuit board

Communications, aerospace, Internet of Things, automobiles, consumer electronics and aerospace are just a few industries that need high-speed printed circuit boards. The assembly of high-speed board is different from that of standard board in several aspects. In fact, these differences in circuit board assembly contribute to the production of high-speed circuits. Therefore, if you are a PCB designer working on a high-speed PCBA project for the first time, you need to know the design techniques listed in this article.

Criteria for optimizing PCBA speed

Poor layout and design may lead to some performance problems when assembling high-speed PCB. The following are the areas that must be paid special attention to when carrying out high-speed PCB assembly projects.

1. Planning: High-speed PCB assembly needs adequate planning related to signal speed, sensitive signals, material requirements and other customer-specific requirements. Write down all the main points to avoid confusion in the future.

2. Prepare the schematic diagram: Pay special attention when preparing the schematic diagram, because it is helpful for the whole high-speed PCB assembly. With the accurate description of the circuit flow in the schematic diagram, engineers assigned to work on the circuit board can clearly understand the sequence of components, the wiring of differential pairs, clock lines and so on. In turn, this helps them determine the layout of high-speed PCB. Generally speaking, preparing the schematic diagram is the first step, which greatly helps to organize and demonstrate the high-speed design.

3. Collaboration: In most cases, schematic workers may be different from those who deploy circuit boards. Therefore, it is recommended that the person in charge discuss with the person who made the initial schematic diagram and layout in the future.

4. PCB materials and stacking requirements: The materials used in the assembly play a huge role in determining the final assembly speed. Compared with standard PCB, special materials are used in the production of high-speed board. The materials used include FR-4 and Rogers. At the same time, how to construct layer stack is also of great significance to determine the speed of final assembly. Placing the signal layer adjacent to the plane layer, routing high-speed signals on the inner layer between planes and using multiple ground layers in the layer stack are helpful to optimize the speed.

5. Component placement: Some proven component placement strategies for high-speed PCB. You can place components in key power supply locations, or arrange input/output points or individual circuits to improve circuit speed.

6. Power plane and ground plane: It is recommended to avoid using any routing signal to separate the ground plane. Doing so will lead to annoying EMI and signal timing problems, which will affect PCB speed.

7. Pad pattern size: It is common to design larger pads for standard circuit boards, but it is not recommended for high-speed circuits. It is best to keep the pad size at 0-5% of the component pin size. In turn, this provides more space for assembling differential pairs, vias and FPGA or IC, which is essential for optimizing the speed of the circuit board.

8. Parasitic: These are basically accidental stray capacitances, which will affect the performance and speed of the final component. Therefore, it is important to find out the source of this parasitism and avoid this inductance in the design of high-speed board.

9. Wiring/shielding: The mutual interference of signals on the circuit board is a common problem faced by designers. Please note that this kind of signal conflict between signal paths is not allowed when designing high-speed PCB. Keeping a good distance between signal traces, minimizing long traces on adjacent circuit board layers, and keeping the minimum length of parallel traces will help solve this problem.


PCB engineers who are committed to optimizing PCB speed must also pay attention to the following design techniques:

• Use heat sink in plane connection.

• Minimize crosstalk between traces.

• Using differential routing technology

•  Try to stay straight

•  Connect the power supply pin to the power supply layer with wide and short traces. 

• Buffer the load to limit the load capacitance

• Understand stripline and microstrip routing technology.

• Use a specific shape or "topology" to achieve the required circuit path.

• Route signals in a way that ensures maximum shielding benefits.

• Set aside an effective way for the current return.

•  Minimize the coupling between traces.

About Maxipcb

Maxipcb inspires and empowers innovators and helps them bring world-changing technologies to life. We provide advanced design, simulation and testing solutions to help engineers complete development and deployment faster in the whole product life cycle, while controlling risks. Our customers are all over the world, such as communication, industrial automation, aerospace and national defense, automobile, semiconductor and general electronics. We join hands with customers to accelerate innovation and create a safe and interconnected world.