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LM96000: LM96000 layout guideline

Part Number: LM96000

Team,

Sometimes we got LM96000 fan speed information affected by noise.

May I know if you can provide the layout guideline, especially for TACH signal, to prevent the noise of fan speed information.

Thank you.

  • George,

    Do you have a schematic? What are the noise aggressors onboard?

    Do you have some waveform capture of the noise?

    How many layers do you have on the pcb?

    Depending on the situation, you might want to consider shielding (e.g. using guard rings) and/or filtering.

    E-noise coupling is proportional to distance so you might want to give the TACH signal some buffer space from the high freq signals.

    B-noise coupling is function of the area size made from the traces so you want to minimize the loop areas.

    -Kelvin

  • Kelvin,

    Thanks for your feedback.
    I know your idea to prevent the noise from TACH signal.
    But what I need is the layout guideline.
    For example, shielding and filter is needed, but how to implement it in the PCB? Could you provide a real case or a example for customer?
    Distance is required, but how much distance is needed, what is your suggestion about how long the distance is? Could you please give a real case about this?
    And also the loop area, would you also share a real case for customer?
    Guideline with picture to show how to do it will be much better for customer to understand it.
    Thank you.
  • George Chen,

    Example techniques of shielding a signal:

    You can embed the signal trace within ground planes as in section 1.4 of this app note:
    www.ti.com/.../sboa173.pdf

    More layout guideline examples:

    www.ti.com/.../snva054c.pdf

    www.ti.com/.../spraar7g.pdf

    Example of filtering:

    You can add maybe a 1nF/10nF decoupling cap to the input of the TACH pin depending on the noise frequencies and amplitude. This is just basic RC filtering at work.

    I think this is a general layout problem and it's not necessarily unique to LM96000. Hope those documents can help.

    -Kelvin