The design and implementation of electronic systems involves various critical aspects that need to be considered to ensure optimal performance and reliability. Some of the critical areas that require attention include system-level architecture, schematic review, PCB design, EMC testing and certifications, and physical design of high-speed electronic circuits.
System-level architecture and floor-planning involve the design of the main boards, daughterboards, backplanes, connectors, cables, grounding, enclosure design, and shielding, as well as installation practices. All these factors need to be carefully considered to ensure optimal system performance and reliability.
Schematic review is also a critical step in the design process. This involves the review of high-speed signals, differential signaling, I/O interfaces (digital/analog, telecom, and local-area network), magnetics, filters, connectors, power supply filtering, and board decoupling/bypassing. Proper attention to these factors is crucial to ensure optimal signal integrity and electromagnetic compatibility.
In PCB design, proper stackup selection and layer assignment, partitioning, routing of high-speed and other critical nets, termination, noise-coupling mechanisms, and prevention, common-mode suppression, I/O and filtering, high-voltage clearances, power-supply, decoupling, and bypassing, power, and ground planes, and grounding all need to be considered to ensure optimal performance.
EMC testing and certifications are also critical in the design process. This involves working with the customer to review specifications, supporting testing, obtaining certificates, and reviewing and troubleshooting new and existing designs.
Finally, the physical design of high-speed electronic circuits is also critical. At the speeds of nearly all electronic designs in modern technologies, the physical characteristics of the design implementation contribute to the behavior of the circuits as much as the parts of the electrical design that are included in the schematic. Proper attention to these physical characteristics such as transmission-line propagation, delay, attenuation, dispersion, finite impedance of the conductors, metal planes, and power-supply structures, discontinuities due to imperfect interconnects such as power and ground inductance, properties of the connectors and selected pinout, unintended current-paths, crosstalk, emission, and immunity, are all crucial to ensure optimal circuit performance. Therefore, they must be addressed during the design process, from the schematic to the PCB and system level.