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Top 10 Tips for High Speed PCB

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It wasn’t that long ago when the word “high speed” didn’t exist in
the vocabulary of PCB designers. But these days, it seems to be
just the opposite. Back then, the concern was all about putting
the puzzle pieces together and strategizing your way through a
physical board layout. But with high speed design? Now there’s a
bunch of invisible forces to worry about, things like
electromagnetic interference (EMI), crosstalk, signal reflection,
and the list goes on. Here are some practical tips to make your
first high speed design process a success.

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More Data, More EMI

In 2005, 3 Gbps was considered the typical high speed data rate,
but today engineers are dealing with 10 Gbps, and even 25. And
not only that, as we keep pushing for faster and faster clock
rates, we’re making devices smaller than ever to meet growing
consumer demand. Whatever you’re designing today, you most
likely already incorporate some aspect of high speed design,
whether that’s with DDR, PCI Express, USB, SATA, etc.

The amount of complexity and density for high speed

applications can get a little overwhelming. (Image source)

At the heart of high speed, PCB design is an issue of

interference. The faster your data rates are, the more issues you
have trying with to protect the integrity of your signals. Most of
these problems stem from electromagnetic radiation. This
radiation is relatively harmless in small amounts when it makes
contact with a circuit. But when it starts to interference with the
operation of your electronic device as a whole, then radiation
becomes interference, and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)

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becomes a whole new world of problems for you to worry about.

If you’ve ever heard or encountered issues related to noise, then
you know exactly what we’re talking about.

Any current is going to produce a magnetic field, and that’s the

start of electromagnetic radiation. (Image source)

So you might be wondering, how in the world do you ever know if

you’re working on a high speed project without discovering it
through EMI issues? There are several schools of thought here,
and we’ll break down the top 3:

1. Frequency. The first thought is that high speed design is

categorized based on the frequency of a PCB and its ability to
affect circuit performance. For some, this means anything above
50 MHz. Others categorize it into several buckets for low speed
(<25 MHZ), moderate speed (25-100 MHz), high speed
(100-1000 MHz), and anything above that is ultra-high speed,
reserved for RF designers.

2. Traces. There’s also the school of thought that you can use the

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physical dimensions of your trace to determine if you’re working

with a high speed device. This guideline states that once a trace
is more than ⅓ the rise time of your device’s switching speed,
then you’ve got high speed.

3. Separation. The last perspective takes a general approach,

looking at your circuit design as a whole and asking the following
question – does your system physically work together uniformly?
Or do you have a bunch of sub circuits that are all organized into
one larger circuit with everything working together separately?
The latter puts you into the realm of high speed design.

Got your upcoming project classified as high speed? Great.

That’s all the background noise you need to worry about, let’s
now dive into our top 10 tips for a successful design process.

#1 – Always Start Your High Speed Design

Process With a Plan

We’re starting with the most obvious tip, but for a good reason.
Without a plan and a strategy for your high speed design project,
you’ll likely encounter setbacks, respins, and unexpected issues.
So before ever laying down a symbol or connecting a net, you
need some kind of a checklist in hand of what lays ahead. Here
are some of the questions that you’ll want to be asking yourself:

System organization – Do I have a visual diagram that will help

me to visualize how all of my sub-circuits interconnect and a well-
established return current?

Signal speed – Do I know the highest frequency and fastest rise

time of each of my signals?

Power supply – Have I documented every one of my voltage

and power requirement for all of my ICs, and will I need to split

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any power planes?

Sensitive signals – Do I have a plan to meet my requirements

for differential signals, controlled impedance, and trace length or
propagation?

These are not the only questions you’ll need to ask yourself
during the planning stage, but they’ll get you started. You’ll also
likely need to work with your manufacturer to understand their
minimum tolerance requirements. And you’ll need to consider
developing a strategy to reduce the level of noise on your high
speed signals with a variety of routing methods including
microstrip or stripline traces.

Known by many as the go-to book for all things high speed
design. Start your plan with studying! (Image source)

#2 – Document Every Detail of Your Board

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Stackup for Manufacturing

To build off of the planning stage in Tip 1, it’s now time to define
and document your layer stackup requirements thoroughly. This
is a perfect time to get together with your manufacturer to
determine what materials of your board, and what specific
constraints you need to input into your design rules. As far as
materials go, you’ll likely be working with one of these:

FR-4. This is a great material when you’re working with clock

speeds of < 5Gbps and is classified as a low speed material.
FR-4 has a decent ability to control impedance and is also known
for its low cost.

Nelco, SI, or Megtron. In the realm of high speed design, you’ll

likely be working with these materials. Each is suited for 5-25
Gbps clock speeds.

Rogers. If your first high speed design is pushing 56Gbps, then

you’ll likely end up using a Rogers laminate. This is a high
frequency, high-temperature material known for good impedance
consistency, but it’s also expensive to produce.

Rogers has a bit of a different look to it when compared with

FR4, notice the thickness! (Image source)

Once you know the material you’ll need to have your board
manufactured; now it’s time to keep some other layer stackup
strategies in mind.

First, you’ll always need to have a signal layer placed adjacent to

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a plane layer to provide your signals with an efficient return path.

It’s also worth considering routing all of your high speed signals
on the inner layers of your board between planes, which will
provide shielding against any external emitted radiation.

Lastly, also consider using multiple ground planes in your layer

stack up. This will help to lower your reference impedance and
reduce common-mode radiation from affecting your circuit.

#3 – Floor Planning – Organize Your Board Into

Logical Sections

Along the lines of planning out your high speed design

requirements and your layer stack up, you also need to consider
how your board is going to be organized. Remember above when
we talked about how high speed design can be classified based
on a collection of sub-circuits? You’ll need to decide where all of
these sub-circuits are placed within the larger design.

This is particularly the case for digital and analog sections, which
need to be carefully isolated to reduce any potential interference.
When planning out the physical organization of your layout,
consider something like the image below. This engineer has
clearly kept digital away from analog, and the Power section
isolated from both digital and analog.

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Know where all of your circuits are going to go?

#4 – Know How to Use Your Power and Ground

Planes

Now that your planning and layer stackup is fully defined, it’s time
to get into the nitty gritty details that you’ll need to consider when
designing. The first is your ground plane, which needs to be
complete. By this, we mean not splitting your ground plane with
any routed signals. If you create a split in this plane, signals will
have to go around the void, which can lead to some nasty EMI
and signal timing issues. If you do need to split a ground plane,
then be sure to add a 0 Ohm resistor alongside the signal trace
so that your return signal has a bridge to make its return path
easier.

A great example of the extra work a signal has to take with a split

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plane. (Image source)

#5 – Keep the Size of Your Land Patterns at a

Minimum

Any PCB design you’ve worked on in the past has probably had
larger pads than was necessary. This was done for obvious
reasons. It makes it easier to fit a soldering iron on the pad,
inspections are quicker, and component placement precision
becomes less of an issue.

But with high speed designs, your board real estate is going to be
at a premium, and every inch of space you can save will count
towards making it all fit. In light of this, we recommend
maintaining a minimum oversize for all of your pads at 0-5% of
the size of the component pins. This is compared with a
traditional oversize of around 30% for standard electronic
designs.

Why the drop in space? Not only will this help to improve
mechanical strength, but it’s also going to reduce your parasitic
capacitance, which comes in handy when dealing with high
frequencies. And most important, the less space you give to your
pads the more room you’ll have for differential pairs, vias, and
those high pin-count parts like FPGAs or ICs.

#6 – Route Your Signals for Maximum Shielding

Benefits

The high frequency signals on your board are going to be

emitting a ton of electromagnetic radiation as they travel from
source to sink. And the last thing you want to happen is to have
two signals interfering with each other or a nearby component. To
avoid conflicts on your board and maximize shielding benefits for

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your signals, consider these guidelines:

Be sure to keep long, parallel signals on your board at a

minimum to avoid any signal coupling or crosstalk.

Maintain as much distance as possible between your signal

traces, and even consider routing signals on a separate layer if
they’re going to be particularly noisy.

When routing signals on different layers, be sure to route them

orthogonally to each other. That is, on one signal layer your
traces will be routed horizontally, and on the other vertically, 45
degrees, etc.

Each layer is being routed in a different direction orthogonally to

avoid coupling. (Image source)

#7 – Provide an Efficient Path for Current Return

On high speed designs, each of your signals is going to seek a

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route from source to sink along the path of least impedance. For
system clocks and other high speed I/O devices, ensuring this
smooth path of travel might require the use of a via. Without
these, you might find yourself with currents spreading around
splits in your ground plane, and in turn leading to a loss of signal
integrity.

Transition vias can quickly get your traces from source to sink on
high speed layouts. (Image source)

If you do find yourself using vias to return your currents to their

termination, then make sure you use tightly coupled, impedance
matched differential vias to ensure your signals arrive on time.
And when placing your return vias, place them as close as
possible to your signal vias to minimize the length your signal has
to travel.

#8 – Use the 3W Rule to Minimize Coupling

Between Traces

Having your transmission lines couple can spell bad news for the
integrity of your signal in transit. And while there’s always the

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general rule of keeping traces as far apart as possible to

minimize this risk, it gets a bit fuzzy when it comes to the
execution.

If you’ve ever wondered how far you need to keep your traces
from each other to minimize coupling, then use the 3W rule. It
states that the separation between traces must be three times
the width of a single trace when measured from center to center.
You can also increase this separation from three to 10 times to
get even greater gains on reducing coupling and crosstalk.

The 3W rule will keep your traces far enough as possible to

minimize coupling. (Image source)

#9 – Use the 20H Rule to Minimize Plane Coupling

In addition to the risk of coupling for individual traces, you also

have to worry about the coupling between power and ground
planes on your layout. If these two couple, you’ll get RF radiation
spilling off the edges of your board, called fringing.

To prevent this from happening, you’ll want to make any power

plane that is adjacent to a ground plane smaller than the ground

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plane. This will allow any fringing to be absorbed into the ground
plane instead of radiating out externally. How much smaller
though? Use the 20ᐧH rule, which says to make your power plan
20 times smaller than the dielectric thickness between your
adjacent power and ground planes.

The 20ᐧH rule helps to reduce coupling between power and

ground planes. (Image source)

#10 – Finishing Off With General Routing

Guidelines

To finish off our top 10 tips is routing, which really deserves a

blog post of its own, and probably a book to address things like
RF, microwave or antenna design. This list isn’t exhaustive, so be
sure to seek out the advice of a seasoned engineer for
application-specific routing techniques. Here we go:

90-degree no-no. The first is always to avoid using 90-degree

angle bends in your traces. Right angled traces can lead to signal
reflections.

Differential pairs. You’ll only get the benefits of electromagnetic

field cancellation when both the signals in your differential pair
have the same length and gap. This will likely require some
length match tuning in your PCB design software.

Transmission lines. Take the time to carefully design your

transmission lines with the use of microstrip or stripline traces.

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Microstrip traces will only provide one reference plane separated

by a dielectric. If you need more shielding capabilities, then a
stripline will place a trace between multiple ground planes and a
dielectric.

New Solutions with High Speed Design

When working on your first high speed PCB design project, there
are new issues that you’re bound to discover. It’s no longer just
about fitting the puzzle pieces together until everything fits as it
should. Now you have to worry about exactly what those signals
in your traces are doing, and how they’re affecting the parts
around your board. All of this really boils down to a problem of
EMI. And as you dive deeper into the world of high speed design
you’ll begin arming yourself with strategies and knowledge to
combat EMI with EMC, or electromagnetic compatibility. So
consider these top 10 tips just enough to get you started on your
first project, there’s still so much to learn!

Ready to begin your first high speed design project? Autodesk

EAGLE has all the tools you need including differential pair
routing, blind/buried vias, length tuning, and more. Subscribe to
EAGLE to get started!

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