Application Note: Electromagnetic (EM) Visualization Locates Intermittent Faults In High-Speed Printed Circuit Boards

By How-Siang Yap, Agilent EEsof EDA

The EM simulation and visualization technique helps designers locate potential causes of failure that are not easily identified, even through hardware prototyping and probing with an oscilloscope.

High-speed and high-frequency PCB (printed circuit board) designers often encounter perplexing intermittent faults in their finished PCBs that defy their attempts to troubleshoot the cause via probing and viewing oscilloscope responses. In fact, the problems seem to disappear when the probe touches down. The following is an actual case study of a video graphics card PCB implementation.

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