Design Flow

Concept

• Consolidate the idea and generate draft specifications technical and financial for further evaluation
• Ascertain technical feasibility and generate most promising architectures
• Establish market feasibility, confirming customer need is satisfied and market share is suitable
• Check financials to ascertain that return on investment is attractive
• Refine the design functionality with a system simulation using performance values of available parts
• Re-evaluate market and financials with new formulated design
• Fully simulate the design concept and quantify performance issues (Spectral mask, Isolation and EMC)
• Document the design concept and confirm any specification changes are acceptable for all stakeholders

Product development

• Build a comprehensive product breadboard to demonstrate concept functionality
• Design review the breadboard results for the required specifications
• Reiterate circuit design, simulation and definition based on design review findings
• Design manufacturing and test process
• Update documentation and confirm any changes with all stakeholders
• PCB Design and layout to fit agreed form factor
• Build design prototypes
• Build a representative manufacturing test system
• Test the prototypes and check manufacturing test system concurs

Volume production

• Advertise the upcoming release
• Consolidate any DFM issues found in the prototypes into the pilot layout and build
• Use pilot build to demonstrate manufacturability including documentation
• Pilot units to be used for final regulatory testing and customer demonstrations
• Update / refine documentation and confirm any changes with all stakeholders
• Start first production phase and confirm volume, rates and cost goals

Product sustaining and obsolescence

• Review the manufacturing test results
• Streamline and refine manufacturing process
• Consolidate any DFM issues found in pilot manufacture
• Update manuals and documentation accordingly
• Research available alternative components or consider a sub circuit add-on when components become obsolete

Prototyping ancillaries

PCB assembly and rework equipment

• Microscope
• Soldering rework station
• Reflow oven

Lab test equipment

• Oscilloscope
• Spectrum analyser
• Signal generator
• Power supply

Design tools available

Simulation

• PathWave (Keysight)
• HFSS (Ansys)
• Microwave studio (CST)
• AWR Microwave Office (Cadence)

Hardware

• FPGA RTL VHDL design software (Xilinx / Vivado)
• PCB layout design software

P-mod Solutions

Quick Prototyping

GaN FET Half bridge P-mod development PCB

Two EPC2021 Gallium Nitride FETs with integral drivers in a half bridge configuration. Operatiing from a single 3V3 (pulse width modulated) logic input with a high side power supply. Suitable for prototyping audio class D amplifiers or power supply switchers and RTL VHDL source code for easy integration into a wide range of FPGA development PCBs.

Audio A2D P-mod development PCB

A Texas Instruments PCM1804 audio analog to digital converter integrated with a single ended to differential input buffer operational amplifier. The Pmod default setup is for 24 bit data audio quality with a four times over sampled audio signal for the left and right channels. All converter parameters are pre-selectable supporting other data rates. The interfacing configuration can be set to I2C or DSP mode. RTL VHDL source code available for easy integration into a wide range of FPGA development PCBs.

Reckoners & Calculators

Atten Pad

• Attenuator Pad calculator, this table lists the E24 series resistor values required to make a "Tee" or "Pi" attenuator network. For each integer dB attenuator value in the range 1 to 20dB, the calculated loss is also provided

Phase Noise

• The A2D converter phase noise jitter clock reckoner. A graph of the phase noise required for a given signal to noise ratio and frequency. The plot axies are signal to noise resolution (converter effective number of bits) against the full scale sine wave frequency.

dBm - Volts

• Calculator to convert dBm into watts, volts pk to pk and volts RMS

Return Loss - VSWR

• Calculator to convert Return Loss into VSWR.