Getting Started with an nRF52 Series MCU Part Three

Tech Consultant Zach Peterson is placing an antenna in this third installment in the nRF52 series. He then explores the matching conditions, how to route all of this in the nRF52, then finally some beginning and advanced board cleanup options.
0:00 Intro
0:44 Antenna Decisions
2:57 Component Placement
5:38 Patch Vs. Printed Microstrip Antenna
7:07 Antenna Routing
15:35 Second Antenna
17:01 Via Stitching & Beginning Cleanup
19:43 Advanced Cleanup
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[@dmitry.shpakov]

Thanks Zach! The best series ever, especially for young players!

[@RSP13]

Thanks. Question (20:33): you removed solder mask over the antenna to reduce losses, and accepted the ENIG finish instead. OK. But isn't ENIG more lossy than the solder mask at all frequencies (including 2.4GHz)?

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

It's been awhile since I watched this so I don't recall stating that ENIG had to be used, just that it is still an option at these platings. But regarding ENIG, you're right that the loss with ENIG is larger than with something like immersion silver or immersion tin, but at 2.4 GHz the different is pretty minor. I've shown graphs comparing losses with platings in another video and at a couple GHz the curves all start to overlap with each other. Once you get to the 10's of GHz you really notice the differences between various platings. So for this I would argue ENIG could still be acceptable if your goal is reliability.

[@blanchehermine]

I would prefer to see how to design an inverted F-antenna for 2.4 GHz.

[@jimjjewett]

Am I confusing this with a different series, or did part 2 keep all components on top (even at the cost of some longer/noisier routing) to save costs, and part 3 just went went to the bottom without a second thought? Is there a rule of thumb for the costs of an extra assembly side? Whether you should then revisit earlier routing decisions? Whether board shrinkage will offset that cost?

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

I flipped the battery connector to the back side because its orientation would interfere with the antenna. So given the state of the board in that moment either the antenna would need to flip over and the board size would need to increase, or there would be a lot more component shifts to get the battery connector out of the way of the antenna. Placing on the back side was the easiest change in this case. Also since this is just a project and won't go into high volume, I'm not worried about assembly on the back side.

[@jasontoo]

Is impedance no longer a concern when using microstrip? how are we matching impedances? - variation in stack ups etc? bonus q; how do you design a microstrip from scratch? say you do not have access to a ref design.

[@Zachariah-Peterson]

Designing a microstrip from scratch is easy. Determine the stackup and just calculate the width. For this design, I am using a coplanar arrangement. So you'll see in part 4, that the coplanar line impedance is set by changing the clearance to the copper pour on the top layer. We could also just route straight in to the antenna and the microstrip width would have been about 8 mils. Either approach is correct, but because this is a tutorial I'm opting to follow the reference design for the moment. You'll see the impedance aspect handled in part 4.