Tony Richards is a Principal Consultant Engineer at Plextek RFI Ltd, which is part of the Plextek Group. Mr Tony Richards Speaker Principal Consultant Engineer, This is necessary to allow each course to run independently. *Attendees should note that there is a small overlap between parts of this course and the Practical RF/Microwave Design course.

Impedance of ground plane, ground plane currents.

One common ground plane or separate analog and digital ground planes?.

Controlled impedance lines and panel test structures.

PCB multilayer board processing example, blind, buried, through-hole and micro vias.

PCB substrates: FR4, RF laminates & RF PTFE based boards.

Example of the impact of components and parasitics on a practical filter.

Modelling passive surface mount components.

Substrate height vs max frequency, metallisation, skin depth & surface roughness.

Transmission lines on PCBs: microstrip, stripline, co-planar.

High speed digital signal routing techniques.

Decoupling capacitor selection, use of ferrites.

Techniques to achieve optimum supply decoupling.

Origins of supply noise in digital CMOS circuits and its impact on circuit operation.

Minimising cross coupling, separation and screening techniques, cavity resonance.

Cross coupling by conduction and radiation.

How does interference transfer from one area to another?

How impact of digital noise varies from system to system.

Impact of digital noise on radio performance.

Operation, sources and characteristics of digital noise.Overview of blocks and components found in digital section of RF systems.Operation, sensitivity and susceptibility to degradation.A modern radio receiver: a very sensitive analogue application.Overview of blocks and components found in analogue section of RF systems.

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