Whether you’re a digital or high frequency analog designer, it pays to know how to work with mmWave frequencies and how to accommodate RF signals in a digital design. RF PCB layout is all about preventing interference between board sections and ensuring sensitive signals do not heavily interfere with each other. If you’re unsure how to get started with a new RF product, including at mmWave frequencies, take a look at our RF PCB layout tips.

Component Placement

Before you start routing anything, you need to place components around your new PCB. This is where smart floorplanning becomes critical; you need to place components and circuit blocks so that EMI between them is minimized. Simply brute-force filtering every signal around the board isn’t going to guarantee signal integrity, and there are more elegant ways to floorplan an RF PCB layout to ensure signal integrity.

There are four primary tasks to undertake when preparing an RF PCB layout:

• Stackup design. Just like high speed boards, RF boards need to have the right stackup. This helps provide stable impedance, plan routes, and provide isolation from external EMI.


• Impedance control and routing style. Stackup and impedance control go hand-in-hand, and many high frequency boards operating at microwave or mmWave frequencies will need impedance controlled routing. The stackup will determine your trace width for your desired routing style, and circuit blocks should be arranged with enough space to accommodate the routing style in the PCB layout.


• Circuit block arrangement. When you’re planning your RF PCB layout, but before you start routing, try to segment circuit blocks into different sections of the board. This can be done by function or frequency, as shown in the accompanying floorplanning image. Watch out for planning your return path in the board as you do not want analog signals with different frequencies and modulation schemes interfering with each other.


• Planning for isolation. Unless you’re using an inherently shielded waveguide routing style like substrate integrated waveguides, you’ll need to plan isolation into your PCB layout.

 

 

In the above layout, the important point here is the use of isolation between different circuit blocks and the placement of an antenna section near the board edge. As an example of a commercial mmWave system, the center-fed patch antenna arrays used in 77 GHz radar modules are placed on a separate board, so the antenna board’s ground plane and ground pour provide the required isolation from other board sections. Once you’ve determined where you should place each component in your layout to ensure signal and power integrity, you can start to think about routing your RF PCB.

Routing Your RF PCB Layout

Just like a high speed digital board, RF PCB layout and routing requires preventing a range of standard signal integrity problems, which becomes quite important in both high speed and RF systems. The same problems that arise in high speed PCBs will also occur in an RF PCB layout, the difference is the relevant frequency range, bandwidth, and sensitivity to noise. When you’re floorplanning your PCB layout, you’ll have to plan on routing and isolating critical RF lines to prevent interference between them. This involves isolating routes and ensuring consistent impedance along a route.

Vias in RF PCB Layout

The use of vias in RF PCB layout should proceed with caution. There are a number of points to consider when determining whether to use vias in your PCB layout, but the most important point is the signal frequency. Just like other areas of RF layout, you might need to sacrifice routing convenience in favor of RF signal integrity.

At sufficiently low frequencies, vias on an RF transmission line may not be so important as their input impedance resembles the impedance of the downstream section of transmission line. Assuming all downstream sections are matched, then we don’t need to worry about the impedance of a via. This changes when we look at high frequencies, particularly at mmWave frequencies. The image below shows where parasitics arise in the use of vias in mmWave routing in an RF PCB layout.

 

 

Isolating RF Sections While Routing

Many isolation structures have been developed and examined over the recent past, particularly as mobile devices became more ubiquitous and started operating at successively higher frequencies. Now that mmWave products are becoming more common and widely commercialized, designers need more isolation structures than just taking advantage of guard traces and ground planes in a multilayer board. Some options include:

• Electronic bandgap structures. These are prevalent in mobile devices, boards with antenna arrays, and other passive RF products.


• Via fences. This is a variation on electronic bandgap structures, where a periodic via array provides narrowband suppression of RF radiation through destructive interference.


• Ground pour. This is standard in many boards, but it is also useful in RF boards as it allows a designer to use coplanar waveguide routing. By adjusting the dimensions of the line and its distance to ground pour, a designer can maintain quasi-TEM propagation.


• Absorbing conformal coatings. The use of absorbing conformal coatings on a PCB can provide wideband isolation. In particular, it suppresses edge emission from cavity modes at mmWave frequencies, which can have a complicated structure with non-integer relationship between resonances.

The routing style you choose can have some natural isolation, which is why mmWave PCBs will often use grounded coplanar waveguide routing. Alternative methods are substrate integrated waveguides and mode-selective transmission lines, both of which provide high isolation. Critical traces at mmWave frequencies should use one of these advanced routing schemes as well as isolation techniques to prevent interference between board sections.

 

The experienced PCB design and layout team at NWES can help you create your next advanced RF PCB layout with advanced routing schemes. We help our private clients, aerospace companies, and the US military stay at the cutting edge with advanced PCB design and layout services. We've also partnered directly with EDA companies and advanced PCB manufacturers, and we'll make sure your next design is fully manufacturable at scale. Contact NWES for a consultation.

 

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