Key Design Factors for Power and Ground Connections

In high frequency engineering, most of the attention goes to the signal path, where we design circuits and systems, analyze their operation and measure the results when completed. What is often overlooked (or over-simplified) is the other connections to those circuits—power and ground. These connections are part of the circuit, and can greatly affect the performance. Because it is not possible to cover this important topic properly in a few pages, this tutorial is intended primarily as a reminder about the most important issues with power and ground connections.