Shield Digital Design

Is Astranis Preparing for Acquisition via SPAC?

Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 -0400

An S-1 was just filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for FutureCorp Space Acquisition 1, which is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company ( SPAC ). This corporation was formed to focus on "companies in the global space economy and adjacent industries" and while a few different industries are listed, two specifics included on page 3 of the S-1 are telecommunications as well as defense-related activities.

2026: The Year So Far and a Look Forward

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:08:02 -0400

The year is only a quarter over, and already it has been incredibly busy, not to mention fun! It's been filled with more networking than I could have imagined, having finally had the honor of attending DesignCon. Not only that, but the work going on at Chipletz is truly amazing. Here's a quick summary of the year so far, as well as a view of what's ahead.

DesignCon 2026

DesignCon 2026 (as imagined by AI… I didn’t actually have any good photos, nor did Chipletz have a booth there).

Chipletz at DesignCon 2026

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0400

What did Chipletz Present at DesignCon this Year?

Last month, I had the great honor of joining with some of my colleagues to presenting some of our work from Chipletz at DesignCon 2026. We've been doing some fascinating work in the area of advanced packaging, and we're grateful for the opportunity to share this work at such a prestigious conference.

New Church Kids Game Show Tool Available!

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:10:00 -0500

I recently put together a simple, fun little Python tool that I've been using, and I thought I'd share it with you all! It's called Church Kids Game Show, and it's built to make review games and interactive lessons a breeze for parents, teachers, and church leaders.

What is it?

Basically, Church Kids Game Show is a lightweight desktop app. It takes questions and answers from a basic CSV file and turns them into a colorful, clickable grid on your screen. Instead of doing a traditional Jeopardy-style board with strict categories, this uses a flexible system based on colors and numbers.

Book Review---On The Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

On The Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks

Here we have a wonderful collection of short stories, all related to various geographical and cartographical topics. The book was an absolute blast to read, and I'd recommend it for anyone even just the least bit interested in maps.

Check it out! *Paid link

On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks by Simon Garfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book Review---Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans

This book predates AI Chat Bots and is more of a history of what led up to them. Read my review below for more information.

Check it out! *Paid link

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was absolutely wonderful to read in 2026, a few years after the introduction of LLMs and GPTs. Overall, I greatly appreciated that this book provided a clear history and explanation of AI/ML technologies prior to this current boom. This book was published just a year before I began my graduate studies (in the application of AI/ML to electromagnetics ). Since I was a complete AI novice when I began my graduate studies, I wish I had read this book back then to give myself a jump start into the industry.

Is ChatGPT Your Friend or Enemy: You Decide

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0400

It Began With…

“Tell me a dark story about a guy who makes pizza with a twist ending” Those were the first words I ever wrote to ChatGPT. Seriously. I was testing out this “new chat thing” that was supposedly very good. And we were all impressed. I read that story aloud to the friends I was hanging out with that night. We were all so blown away by the details and intrigue it seemed to pull out of thin air in a matter of seconds. My prompts and relationship with ChatGPT have come a long way since then.

Using PSPICE Components in LTspice

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A recent post on the PCEA Discord server requested a bit of assistance using PSPICE models within LTspice. Here's a quick video explaining how I usually do this!

For reference, this video shows how to download the PSPICE model for the TI LM293 comparator and import it into LTspice . We then set up a very basic circuit to show functionality.

A Coast Guard Boat in a Tornado!

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0400

For many years, I've loved listening to Owl City; this affinity has carried down to my children who, along with me, particularly enjoy their latest album. While each song in the album is an excellent story in its own right, we all like the tale told in The Tornado. This led to my own recounting of a time, many years ago, when I experienced some extreme weather while aboard a Coast Guard buoy tender in the Long Island Sound. The kids, in their own manner of storytelling, have begun to tell this story as, "the time daddy was inside the middle of a tornado". While I may not have been in the very center of the storm, it may be fun to explore some historical data and see how close my boat was to the actual tornado.

S-Parameters from a Neural Network

Tue, 23 May 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Continuing on the theme of using machine learning to speed up electromagnetic simulations, we've got some new work to share! This paper goes beyond the 2D example previously explored and now looks at full-wave 3D solutions . Most importantly, we wanted to show that this is possible with geometry generalizations. For example, many papers pass things like via drill diameter and other parameters directly as input to their neural networks . We instead mesh the geometry into a 3D rectangular grid and pass this as input to the neural network instead. The result was quite impressive!

Can Machine Learning Replace Field Solvers?

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:00:00 -0400

Some initial research points to yes, for certain applications. Here's a preview of a paper I'll be sharing at this year's IEEE EMC + SIPI conference in Spokane. There's still a lot of work to be done, and I'm admittedly quite a machine learning amateur. Even so, I think there are areas in signal integrity where we can find smart ways to apply machine learning to speed up design cycle time.

PCB Stackup Webinar with Nine Dot Connects

Mon, 16 May 2022 12:00:00 -0400

A few months ago, I had the wonderful privilege of presenting a webinar with the great team at Nine Dot Connects (NDC). I've been a huge fan of NDC ever since I first started learning Altium at my first job out of undergrad, so I was thrilled to be asked to work with them. The webinar goes over some important PCB stackup design aspects which are crucial for successful high-speed digital design.

Webinar Recording: DDR5 Post-Layout Verification: Find and Fix Causes of Failure

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 12:00:00 -0400

I recently presented (another) webinar with EMA Design Automation to discuss DDR5 ! This time the discussion was centered around a live post-layout demo. In the example, I showed the analysis of a board with PowerSI (which, of course, had some failures when the DDR report was generated). We then used S-parameter and TDR analysis to track down the failures. Lastly, we used the Clarity Via Wizard to generate new via models and we used Allegro High-Speed Structures to place them in the layout. Lastly, the board was verified to show a passing report.

Webinar Recording: A Dive into DDR5: An Engineers Guide to Simulating and Validating the Latest Generation of DDR

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 12:00:00 -0400

I recently presented a webinar with EMA Design Automation to discuss DDR5 ! I cover the new features added compared to DDR4 then spend some time showing a demo of Cadence Topology Explorer ( TopXp ) including simulation of a full byte lane with IBIS-AMI models.

Why Buy When You Can Spend More Time and Money Making Your Own?

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 12:00:00 -0400

We've all been there: you've got a problem to solve and are faced with the make versus buy decision. In my case, I wanted to switch a USB peripheral between two PCs; that's the only hard requirement. The easiest solution would have been to simply add a USB hub to my KVM switch and call it a day, but that wouldn't carry USB-3 multi-gigabit data rates (not that I needed to, but I wanted to).

The Quickest Antenna Design of the Year

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 12:00:00 -0400

During a recent weekend, I found myself with some parts laying around which I hadn't used in quite a while. First in the bin was an old Orange Pi One¹ (an underpowered SBC similar to the Raspberry Pi) which I was going to use to run a video conferencing screen but which proved to be unable to run the graphical Linux installation well enough to be usable. My RTL-SDR stick also happened to be out (I can't actually remember why I grabbed it a few weeks ago for the first time in years). As I cleaned everything up and got ready to put it away, I realized that I was probably never going to use this stuff again, so instead of trashing it I decided to put it to good use!

Webinar Recording: 6 Common SI/PI Issues Lurking in Your Design And How to Prevent Them

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 12:00:00 -0400

I recently presented a webinar with EMA Design Automation to explain some common signal and power integrity problems that I've encountered. All of these issues are ones which I've dealt with in the past, and each one shows how ECAD tools can be used to find and fix them before sending a design out for manufacturing. Specifically, each example uses the new Sigrity Aurora analysis features embedded directly within the Cadence PCB Editor, which reduces a lot of the back-and-forth design/analyze/fix cycle that often occurs.

IIoT Low Power Software and Hardware Considerations

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 12:00:00 -0400

Shield Digital Design and MAB Labs have collaborated to publish a white paper describing both hardware and software methods of reducing power consumption for an Industrial IoT (IIoT) wirelessly networked device.

The Mystery Misfire

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 12:00:00 -0400

The dreaded P0171 code… If you've experienced it, just the mention likely gives you nightmares. If not - here's the rundown. P0171 is the automotive On-Board Diagnostics ( OBD ) code¹ for a lean condition on the engine. If the engine is running lean, it simply means that the air to fuel ratio is not optimized, and there's either too much air or not enough fuel. Before I get too far ahead here, let's set the scene.

Parallel Plate Capacitor Equation - Simulated

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 12:00:00 -0400

The Question

A recent homework problem had us derive the parallel plate capacitor¹ equation for electrostatics. This gives the capacitance of a parallel plate structure in terms of the plate area, distance between the plates and relative permittivity. The equation for this situation is:

$ C = \epsilon_{R}\epsilon_{0}\frac{A}{d} $

After solving this problem for the analytical solution, I was curious to see how closely the result matched a 3D field solver. Using the Capacitance Extraction mode in Cadence 3D Workbench, I designed a parametric model of the parallel plate capacitor with variable edge length, distance and dielectric constant (See image above for the model). Dk ² was varied but the complex component (dissipation factor) was set to zero to ignore any dielectric losses. The edges were swept at lengths of 0.1 inch, 1 inch and 10 inch. The distance was swept with values of 1mil, 10mil and 100mil. Finally, the dielectric constant was swept with values of 1, 10 and 100. This resulted in 27 unique cases, and the analytical result was compared to the extracted result in each case.

Antenna Analysis from Ham Radio to PCBs

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Has anyone else ever thought about why so many engineers are also active amateur radio operators? My theory is that there's just so much passion for the science and practical use of these complex electronic systems! We enjoy the problems, challenges and solutions so much that we want to find other ways outside of work to find those same experiences. In this case, I've got a story that starts with some amateur radio equipment but comes full-circle to address an extremely common design issue. Specifically, we'll look at the Arrow OSJ antenna performance as well as the characteristics of a printed circuit board antenna.

NDAA Implications for Design Engineers

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 12:00:00 -0400

I recently found out about the latest National Defense Authorization Act (from I-Connect007) and a new provision for printed circuit boards with some government contract procurement rules. If you made it through that first sentence, then there's a good chance the rest of this article won't be too boring for you! This seems like it's a bit of a dry subject, but it's got me excited for what it means for the future of both PCB manufacturing as well as broader economic impacts in our country. In this article, I'm going to try to explain these provisions (at least to the best of my limited ability to understand them) but more importantly I've got some predictions about what this means for the design engineer (since I'm sure most discussion of the NDAA will probably talk about it only from the perspective of the fabricators and assemblers ).

Stephen Newberry

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Stephen is a proud U.S. Coast Guard veteran who used his hands-on military electrical training as a springboard for his engineering career. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University (New Jersey) and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho. In addition to five years of military enlistment, he has industry experience in both defense and commercial hardware design roles. His focus is in digital hardware, specifically working in the area of signal and power integrity. He has a passion for electromagnetics, especially the analysis of PCB and package interconnects.