Recommendations AN4938
30/48 DocID029918 Rev 1
6 Recommendations
6.1 Printed circuit board
For technical reasons, it is best to use a multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) with a
separate layer dedicated to the ground (V
SS
) and another dedicated to the V
DD
supply. This
provides a good decoupling and a good shielding effect. For many applications, economical
reasons prohibit the use of this type of board. In this case, the major requirement is to
ensure a good structure for the ground and for the power supply.
6.2 Component position
A preliminary layout of the PCB must separate the different circuits according to their EMI
contribution in order to reduce the cross-coupling on the PCB, that is noisy, high-current
circuits, low-voltage circuits, and digital components.
6.3 Ground and power supply (V
SS
,V
DD
)
Every block (noisy, low-level sensitive, digital, etc.) should be grounded individually and all
ground returns should be to a single point. Loops must be avoided or have a minimum area.
The power supply should be implemented close to the ground line to minimize the area of
the supply loop. This is due to the fact that the supply loop acts as an antenna, and is
therefore the main transmitter and receiver of EMI. All component-free PCB areas must be
filled with additional grounding to create a kind of shielding (especially when using single-
layer PCBs).
6.4 Decoupling
All the power supply and ground pins must be properly connected to the power supplies.
These connections, including pads, tracks and vias should have as low impedance as
possible. This is typically achieved with thick track widths and, preferably, the use of
dedicated power supply planes in multilayer PCBs.
In addition, each power supply pair should be decoupled with filtering ceramic capacitors
(100 nF) and one single tantalum or ceramic capacitor (min. 4.7
μF) connected in parallel.
These capacitors need to be placed as close as possible to, or below, the appropriate pins
on the underside of the PCB. Typical values are 10 nF to 100 nF, but the exact values
depend on the application needs.
Figure 18 shows the typical layout of such a V
DD
/V
SS
pair.
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