Fresh PCB Concepts: Key Considerations for Reliability, Performance, and Compliance in PCBs
Elementary Mr. Watson: Navigating RF—A Glide Path Approach to Design Success
Designers Notebook: Layer Stackup Planning for RF Circuit Boards
The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to… Stackups: The Design within the Design
April 18, 2022 | Skyler Sopp, Mercury SystemsEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
If you have ever contemplated crosstalk, eye closure, power loss, or a list of other issues defined in this textbook, then you also need to understand what, why, and how stackups can and will impact your circuit’s performance. After all, the stackup is one of the few things that directly touches every single part of your design; therefore, you must set yourself up for the highest probability of success by establishing a strong foundation through a well-designed stackup.
There are many incredible resources out there for those in the high-speed design industry: Eric Bogatin’s Signal & Power Integrity Simplified, Lee Ritchey’s Right the First Time, and a host of other books and websites. However, there is an apparent void in the realm of stackup design. How has industry gone so long avoiding such an important topic as one that influences everything on the board? The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to… Stackups: The Design within the Design begins to fill the industry-wide void in an easy-to-understand overview that helps define the aspects that you as the engineer need to be thinking about when putting together a stackup.
With 25 years of experience in PCB manufacturing and signal integrity, author Bill Hargin is an expert in the field of stackup design and it shows here. In Chapter 3, Bill shows how your dielectric of choice will directly impact your “eye.” He explains the breakdown of how each variable contributes to the overall loss budget, then defines how he recommends material planning before any routing has begun. This book helps the reader establish the variables of interest and the impact of those variables, and makes a recommendation on what to do about it so you can improve your future designs.
Boards are getting thinner, power requirements are increasing, and routing densities are becoming finer. You will need to make compromises in your stackup, so understanding that trade space is vital. This book breaks down concepts like board loss, material selection, impedance planning, and more to help you understand how each one of them will influence your design when fabricated. This book will assist you in learning how to make educated compromises earlier in the design cycle.
If you are a hardware or electrical engineer who is not already deeply invested in stackup design, this book is really for you. It is full of practical information, not bogged down by technical jargon, has easy to understand and useful images, and gets you off to the races quickly. Even the seasoned veteran will find this book a worthy reference for understanding when one needs to know things like the contribution percentage of each variable on impedance. Regardless of where you are in your stackup knowledge, I recommend downloading the book and reading it! It will be well worth your time and may just save you future headaches.
Skyler Sopp is a signal integrity engineer for Mercury Systems.
This article originally appeared in the April 2022 issue of Design007 Magazine.
Share on:
Suggested Items
RF PCB Design Tips and Tricks
05/08/2025 | Cherie Litson, EPTAC MIT CID/CID+There are many great books, videos, and information online about designing PCBs for RF circuits. A few of my favorite RF sources are Hans Rosenberg, Stephen Chavez, and Rick Hartley, but there are many more. These PCB design engineers have a very good perspective on what it takes to take an RF design from schematic concept to PCB layout.
Cadence Unveils Millennium M2000 Supercomputer with NVIDIA Blackwell Systems
05/08/2025 | Cadence Design SystemsAt its annual flagship user event, CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley 2025, Cadence announced a major expansion of its Cadence® Millennium™ Enterprise Platform with the introduction of the new Millennium M2000 Supercomputer featuring NVIDIA Blackwell systems, which delivers AI-accelerated simulation at unprecedented speed and scale across engineering and drug design workloads.
The Right Blend: Mixed Wireless Technologies
05/08/2025 | Kirsten Zima, Siemens EDAA common trend recently is to employ as many radios as possible on a single PCB. With the increase of wireless standards and the downscaling of PCB size, it can be difficult to know what the most critical design parameters are to focus on. In this article, we’ll discuss the most important considerations to make when designing with mixed wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi, on a single PCB. These considerations include antennas, frequencies, FCC compliance, shielding, and layout with and without transition vias.
ZESTRON Announces New Reliability and Solutions Service for Risk Assessment & Mitigation of Electronic Assemblies
05/06/2025 | ZESTRONZESTRON, the leading global provider of high-precision cleaning products, services, and training solutions, is thrilled to introduce its new Reliability and Solutions (R&S) service.
PCB East Continues to Expand
05/06/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy, Design007 MagazineIt was a perfect week for a conference and trade show in metropolitan Boston, with high temperatures in the 70s. PCB East took place at the Boxboro Regency Hotel and Conference Center April 29–May 2, with the expo on April 30. PCB East has been expanding since its relaunch a few years ago, with conference and show attendance rising each year.