4. PCB Board Design

The 100mm × 100mm, 2-layer PCB board design was done in KiCAD and manufactured by JLPCB. Our board is divided into logical sections, to make testing and diagnosing our circuit easier. When placing components, we considered signal integrity and circuit performance while also adhering to the guidelines provided by JLPCB. Routing of the power and ground connections was made as short and as straight as possible to prevent ground loops. Test points and jumpers were added to make testing and experimentation simpler, however, our next update to the PCB board will definitely include more test points and jumpers.

To keep the input/output impedance as close to 50Ω as possible, we calculated the trace width using KiCAD’s PCB calculator to be 1.064 mm. The digital signals need not have the same trace width. For convenience, we used 0.250 mm.

Below is the 3-D rendered view of the PCB board. This board corresponds to our v2a schematic. A new board will be made encapsulating the issues that we discovered during testing. For information on these problems with our board see issues.

See the project files for complete design files.