Electronics hardware design for connected products
Ambimat Electronics designs the electronics inside a connected product: system architecture, schematic capture, PCB layout, Gerber release and board bring-up, followed by assembly and test. It is the hardware half of AmbiIoT, Ambimat’s IoT and embedded product design and development service, and it can be engaged on its own when a customer already has firmware, industrial design or manufacturing covered elsewhere.
When a customer needs this
- A product concept exists and someone has to turn it into a manufacturable board.
- An existing board needs a respin for cost, size, a new radio, or an end-of-life component.
- A design has failed, or is expected to fail, an EMC or radio certification and needs RF and power work.
- A wearable or space-constrained product needs flexible or flexi-rigid construction rather than a plain rigid board.
PCB design and layout
- Ambimat has realised projects for PCB design, layout and fabrication of multi-layer PCBs ranging from two layers to twelve layers, and possesses the expertise and skill set to go above that.
- Such PCBs are not only Rigid PCBs but also Flexible and Flexi Rigid PCBs. Ambimat has designed boards as thin as 0.2 mm flexible PCBs through to 1.6 mm rigid PCBs carrying multiple RF interfaces.
- Layout is carried out by engineers working on Cadence, OrCAD, Altium, PCAD, PADS, CADSTAR and EAGLE.
Flexible and flexi-rigid work is described in more detail, with recent project examples, on flexible printed circuit boards.
Assembly, wiring and rework
- Technicians manually wire thru-hole and SMD chips as well as passive components in packages such as 1206, 0603 and 0402.
- Pick and place machines place and solder components across a range of packages.
- Packages already wired in past programmes include Small Outline Integrated Circuits (SOIC), TQFP, 208 and 240 pin PQFP, 272 pin BGAs and 200 pin LGAs.
Test and qualification
- The test facility carries power supplies, signal generators, oscilloscopes, analog and digital multimeters, logic analysers and network analysers, coupled with EEPROM programming and PLD development support, development modules, breakout boards and tools for embedded development.
- Functional testing and environmental testing are supported, including a 168-hour burn-in analysis.
RF, power and certification
Ambimat’s RF and power supply designs are the part of this practice with the longest track record. Designs from the past five years have passed international certifications at the first attempt, including FCC Part 15 Subpart B and Subpart C, CE, PTCRB, IEC 61000-4-2, IEC 61000-4-4, IEC 61000-4-5 and ISO 13485. Ambimat was the second organisation in the world to obtain FCC certification for a wireless product in 2014, when the technology was still new to most of the industry.
Which radio or wired interface a board should carry is a design decision rather than a catalogue choice. The technologies Ambimat has actually shipped products on, including cellular 2G, 4G, NB-IoT, CAT M1 and CAT 1, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, LoRa, NFC and UHF/RFID, are set out with the products they were used in on design by technology.
Where hardware design sits in a programme
- Device software for the board is covered by embedded firmware and device software.
- Concept through prototype to a production-grade, DFM-analysed design is covered by turnkey design and development.
- Building the boards, once a design is production-ready, is covered by electronics manufacturing. Manufacturing is not a prerequisite for a design engagement.
The customer owns the IP in every engagement.
Discuss a hardware design
Send the product idea, an existing schematic or a board that needs a respin, and Ambimat will come back on feasibility, layer count and the certification path. Contact Ambimat to start.