With high frequency PCB board design, you need to be as prepared as possible. Firstly, you’ll need to know what it’s used for before going too much further. Once that’s out the way, you need to get planning. Designing a high frequency PCB is not unlike planning the architecture of a house. You need to know which pieces go where and how everything fits together, as well as how many layers your board will be and the materials to use.

Because of that, you shouldn’t immediately start designing the high frequency PCB directly. Instead, it would help if you drew up a schematic.

Your schematic should include all the components you know you’ll require. It should also fit the dimensions of the space in which your PCB needs to match; otherwise, you could be building a board that’s simply too big to be used.

Make sure to create a concept that designates which components need to be connected and the rules that must be followed in the overall design. A design flow chart is ideal for this.

Once the schematic and design flow chart have been finalized, you can start thinking about the PCB design itself.

THE RIGHT KIND OF COMPONENT PLACEMENT AND ROUTING

It would be best if you had considered the component placement necessary during the design phase. But there are ways of adequately placing components to optimize the overall design of your PCB.

You need to consider components as well as the routing of connections. Make sure never to design a high frequency PCB where connections have to cross, as this can cause an overlap in signals that may ruin your design.

A great rule to follow in power outlets is to design with the star-configuration in mind, rather than daisy-chain your connections. If you daisy-chain, that means your connections are running from one component to another.

This means the power has to run through the earliest component first and can result in individual components not getting enough voltage. With a star-configuration, the power will be connected separately to each part of your PCB that requires power.

This then ensures power is distributed equally, and no concerns are surrounding the voltage of the PCB. If your PCB does have layers, the right way of trace routing is to exchange directions between layers. This can help to prevent any cross-wiring on each separate layer.

If you don’t consider leaving this gap, your design could be impacted when it comes to soldering, leaving you with a broken circuit.