Company: OMICRON Electronics GmbH| Industry: Power Utility Automation & Electrical Energy Systems | Solution: Allegro X, PSpice, Sigrity
“Reliability has to be designed in the product—it does not come for granted.”
About OMICRON
OMICRON is a global leader in power system testing, diagnostics, and monitoring solutions. Headquartered in Klaus, Austria, OMICRON operates 24 offices worldwide and serves customers in more than 160 countries. Its products help ensure the safe, reliable, and efficient operation of electrical power systems across the globe.
Goals
OMICRON set out to design the DANEO 400, a hybrid measurement system for power utility automation systems. The DANEO 400 simultaneously analyzes conventional electrical signals (voltages, currents, and hard-wired binary status signals) and digital communication data within substations and can provide information to assess proper coordination. The goal was to deliver a compact, future-proof device with exceptional reliability, safety, and accuracy capable of operating autonomously in unpredictable substation environments while meeting strict international standards.
Challenges
“OMICRON is known for reliable products with high accuracy around electrical energy that allow power systems to run smoothly, safely and efficiently. The printed circuit boards within our products have to be very reliable across a broad range of voltages and currents. Safety for our end-users is a main topic beside future-proof aspects: smaller, lighter, smarter”
With the necessity for high-quality, reliable products, OMICRON faced several design challenges:
Technical Complexity
OMICRON’s design featured multiple interfaces that required differing design rules, including:
- 3 Ethernet ports 10/100/1000 Base-TX (RJ45) for network and control communication
- USB 3.0 for connection to external storage devices
- USB 2.0 to connect the DANEO with the PC as an alternative to the ethernet port
- 2 EtherCAT ports (RJ45) for extension ports
- 10 analog or binary inputs
- Internal storage on a Solid-State-Disc (SSD/60GB)
High-Power/High-Voltage
The DANEO 400 product must support high-voltage and high-power increasing the need for safety precautions during the PCB layout, such as considering creepage and clearance.
High-Density Design
With more than 1,300 components on a 12-layer PCB, the layout was dense and the form factor added to the complexity of the design.
Adherence to Industry Standards
The DANEO 400 device had to comply with IEC standards and ensure long-term reliability for systems deployed in remote and critical infrastructure locations.
Signal Integrity
“Our products are intensively used all over the world and sometimes in very remote locations, so reliability is a key feature. Reliability has to be designed in the product, it does not come for granted”
For reliability, signal quality is of the upmost importance, specifically impedance continuity to minimize reflections and crosstalk.
Mechanical Housing Restrictions and Rigid-Flex Design
OMICRON needed to design a rigid-flex board to comply with strict mechanical housing requirements which provided additional difficulties. This included a complex rigid-flex stackup that must also accommodate impedance routing and high-power nets on one PCB. Additionally, verification of the PCB was important to ensure no collisions occurred between components or the board in the bent state.
To address these challenges, OMICRON leveraged the advanced functionality and unified environment of Allegro X and OrCAD X.
Results
By leveraging the scalable and cohesive software environment from Cadence, OMICRON successfully delivered a highly reliable, compact, and standards-compliant product. The following software was employed to help OMICRON reach design success:
PSpice
In the DANEO 400 design, the inputs are connected with an analog digital converter for precise measurement. Functionality and parasitic effects of these analog circuits were simulated and optimized with PSpice to predict linear behavior and accurate data capture.
OrCAD X Capture
OMICRON was able to leverage OrCAD Capture for not only schematic entry, but for optimizing the number of test points with XJTAG. This enabled OMICRON to ensure proper testability of their device without over-designing.
Allegro X
The features available in Allegro X were able to help OMICRON with a variety of design challenges and create a reliable, high-quality product. These features included:
- Advanced constraint management for spacing, electrical, and physical rules to accommodate design complexity including high-power
- Real-time design rule checks to address issues throughout the design process
- 3D IDX and STEP support for ECAD/MCAD verification
- Stack up design and management for rigid-flex PCBs
- 3D rigid-flex bending and collision detection
OrCAD Sigrity ERC
OrCAD Sigrity ERC was leveraged to verify signal integrity in the design, specifically analyzing crosstalk for traces with widths and minimum spacing of 100mm. This helped OMICRON verify proper operation and improve signal integrity throughout their designs to create a reliable product.
The result was a robust, high-performance measurement system that reinforces OMICRON’s reputation for precision, safety, and reliability in power utility automation. OMICRON was able to leverage the cohesive environment created with Cadence software, creating a seamless product development flow from schematic and SPICE simulation to PCB layout and signal integrity analysis. Learn more about how OMICRON designs highly reliable substation measurement systems with OrCAD X here.
