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50 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2022 Demand continues to increase for boards used in consumer electronics, intelligent machines used in manufacturing, and smart devices for health services applications. Our industry needs more smart people designing PCBs to help drive artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives and power the Internet of ings (IoT), which is why we are welcoming new designers into the fold every day. e PCB layout process is, at its core, a seem- ingly simple one—connect all the points of the components to their necessary endpoints. In practice, it can get complicated in a hurry. For those new to design, it's important to recog- nize there is much more to it than just routing traces from point A to point B. Six Key Considerations for Designers New to PCB Layout So, what are the important design consider- ations you should be sure to consider? e following are six design considerations to help ensure your design is reliable, includes all the necessary connections, is optimized for manufacturability, and dissipates heat away from the electronics. 1. Separation In most design applications, it's important to maintain separation of signal types. e most common example is keeping analog and digital signals and their associated grounds separate. A good design technique for keeping signals separate involves group- ing the sections of the schematic—digital and analog that share a com- mon ground—together in proximity and then placing the ground plane directly below this grouping. Simi- larly, running only analog lines over or under the ana- log ground layer will help reduce capacitive coupling of signals. 2. Four Tips in One for Minimizing EMI Electromagnetic inter- ference (EMI) can really mess with board perfor- mance. EMI is a distur- bance created by electro- magnetic induction and Connect the Dots by Matt Stevenson, SUNSTONE CIRCUITS