Electronics & PCB Design

Overview

From wearable electronics to on-board electronics of spacecrafts, Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are the backbone of every electronic system. To design PCBs that fulfill such diverse systems’ requirements, our designers adopt a scalable and systematic approach. At Zekeng, we design PCBs by using the latest tools and technologies to guarantee compliance with the international quality standards.

Capabilities

Review of ready design
PTH/SMT and HDI layout designs
100% manual design and routing
Flex/rigid and non-standard geometries
High speed and high density digital, analog, RF, power, and mixed signal designs
Complex high-speed systems for low power and noise sensitive devices
Intrinsically safe PCB designs
EMI protection
Single ended and differential impedance control
Fine pitch BGA layout (0.4 mm and below)

Electronics & PCB Design Process

Step1:
Specification & Requirements

Analyzing marketing requirements
Defining product requirements
Defining subsystem requirements
Creating requirements document

Step 2:
Architecture Design

Selecting core components
Researching technologies
Power & signal simulations
Defining modules & interrelationship

Step 3:
Schematic Design

Connecting components and signals
Ensuring signal integrity
Schematic simulations
Schematic review

Step 4:
PCB Layout

Generating Bill of Materials (BOM)
Footprint library development
Mechanical outline & form-factor constraints
Masnual component placement & routing

Step 5:
PCB Manufacturing & Assembly

Export gerbers & production files
Design For Manufacturing (DFM) analysis
Components order
Organizing manufacturing & assembly

Step 6:
Project Finalization

Board bring-up
Function & automation tests
Documentation
Shipping

Fields of Competence

Power Electronics

Zekeng’s hardware engineering team architects a diverse array of power control and conversion designs to realize the optimum balance among reliability, cost, and time-to-market requirements.

Capabilities

Power supply and analog conversion circuit topologies
Energy metering and remote monitoring
Digital control and digital power conversion
Multi-chemistry battery charger and fuel gauge circuits

Featured Project: Power Quality Monitor

Design Challenges

Automatic range adjustment
High resolution and high sampling rate analog to digital conversion
No components that kill high frequency

Solution

Using high quality Programmable Gain Amplifiers
Using 24bit over 100 kHz, Sigma-Delta Analog to Digital Converter
No voltage transformers used
Rogowski Coil for current sensing
High speed Digital Galvanic Isolation

Key Accomplishments

Galvanic separation between mains and signal processing
Successful high voltage & high current design

Analog Electronics

Precision of the design can make or break analog electronics. On the other hand, analog designs are inherently complex. To balance functionality and efficiency amid this complexity is the work of an imaginative engineer. Our engineers build precise analog electronic designs that are employed in power supplies, audio signal processing systems, sensor interfaces, and data acquisition systems. We combine our design services with prototyping and simulation services to deliver a complete solution to our clients.

Capabilities

Low noise amplifiers design
Circuit modeling, simulations and analysis
Analog sensors with digital interfacing
High speed & high resolution analog conversions
ADC and DAC
Class D power amplifier circuit designs
Low power designs
Wide band designs

Featured Project: Modular Guitar Effect

Design Challenges

Low noise analog signal electro-mechanical switching (true bypass)
Low noise hot plug audio interface
Impedance matching
Reducing not desired audio feedback
Low noise from power supply

Solution

Using high quality signal relays
Advanced power supply filtering

Key Accomplishments

All requirements fulfilled

Digital Electronics

The creation of a standard compliant product requires accuracy in each development phase and seamless integration from one phase to another. Starting from product and subsystem requirements, our hardware engineering team adds value to each subsequent phase until a successful production transition. Some of the major industries that use our designed equipment are: tracking devices, healthcare and instrumentation.

Capabilities

ARM9, ARM Cortex
SDRAM, DDR, DDR2 and DDR3
NOR flash and NAND flash interfaces
Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
High speed interfaces (1+ GHz)
High Density Interconnect Design
PCI, PCle, and PCl-x interfaces
HDMI and LVDS
Low power designs

Featured Project: BeagleBone Black Copy

Design Challenges

A Copy of BeagleBone Black with few modifications
Should not crash!

Solution

Better routing of high speed signals to DDR3
High speed design simulations

Key Accomplishments

Successfully manufactured board
Additional features integrated
Speed and stability improved (compared to BBB)