IoT Design

With the cost of components for IoT devices being relatively high, component selection is key to making sure you meet both your cost and functional demands.

If a fitness tracker is not light, comfortable, and fashionable, or if a smartwatch is too bulky, or if an IoT door lockset doesn’t fit in aesthetically, the product is unlikely to ever get off the ground.

Size, weight and look and feel are all critical aspects when designing your IoT device!

Human interface devices must be low-power and highly efficient, to last for an extended amount of time without charging!

When defining connections between components in
a schematic, make sure you:

• Use component management to source components and manage costs
• Use pre- and post-layout simulation on your analog/ mixed-signal circuits

It's critical to meet your design integrity, physical characteristic requirements, and cost requirements!

IoT designs contain analog/mixed-signal circuits, that require model-based AMS, simulation, and analysis during the design phase to ensure high performance and reliability.

IoT designs typically operate in multiple modes, such as standby, transmit/receive, active sensing, recharging, etc. Functional verification MUST be performed on each of these modes!

Simulation is also necessary to get a comprehensive view of your memory interface, whether it’s DRAM or flash!

Being key to every IoT product, you want to make sure you invest in memory connections as well!

To reduce the design and debug cycle time of your DDR-based design, you’ll want to rely on a well-defined constraint management system with the best DDR routing technology you can find.

With upfront planning, simulation, and validation, you’ll be able to quickly and accurately route high-speed, high-bandwidth traces.

Things that can help:

1. Designs are driven by pre-defined, marketable form factors so it's critical to see each board in its 3D enclosure prior to routing
2. Bi-directional cross-probing between schematic and layout speeds up component placement
3. A constraint management system helps you set and enforce electrical constraints
4. Placing components in 2D and 3D helps avoid violations
5. Using capabilities specific to flex and rigid-flex to make sure parts of the design do not interfere with folding, including part placement on flex layers, flex routing plane shape fills, and exporting the design as a 3D solid model to MCAD for better collaboration

The final key to success: Consider the manufacturing and assembly demands of your IoT device during the design flow.

DFT (Design for Test) - Ensure the testability of your design from a bare-board perspective to identify shorts and other manufacturing defects.