A group of four final-year B.Tech. Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) 2018 batch students from the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore campus, secured the Top 5 position in an international circuit design contest, PADS Professional Student Design Challenge 2021, organized and conducted by SIEMENS during May/June 2021.
The second annual PADS Professional Student Design Challenge has been the most prestigious design contest in PCB electronics design for individuals and student design teams. This contest took place at the international level during the first half of 2021. Contestants had a chance to submit any electronics design they felt would highlight their PCB design knowledge and engineering skills, by deploying PADS Professional, the cutting-edge tool for student innovators interested in electronics design that has been developed by Siemens DISW, TX USA. A panel of Siemens experts awarded a score for the eventual design, based on criteria that include design complexity, manufacturability, and PCB design best practices.
Representing the department, Syed Ishtiyaq Ahmed (Roll Number: CB.EN.U4ECE18503), Jaiharie J. (Roll Number: CB.EN.U4ECE18521), R. Sreevatsan (Roll Number: CB.EN.U4ECE18060) and Sujith Krishna S. (Roll Number: CB.EN.U4ECE18063), took the ideation and guidance of the department faculty, Dr. T. Rajagopalan and Dr. G. A. Shanmugha Sundaram, had set themselves the task of designing a heterogeneous multi-layer printed circuit board (HM-PCB) assembly for a compact, low-power K-band transceiver module. It had to incorporate features of SWaP-C, functional segregation and co-site interference suppression in a total RaDaR system destined to operate in the co-located mode on mobile platforms alongside many other critical radio modules. Use cases for this technology include geriatric care, GPS-denied PNT in robotic systems, and ADAS-AD. The constraints had been very exacting, to realize an operational solution, and PADS had the necessary resources that they could bring to bear on the difficult aspects and help with the design and concept of this SFF solution. The verification tools that are integrated into PADS were also invoked to prove the effectiveness of the rendering. The learning curve had been a pretty steep one, and the students’ team – with vital inputs they had received from the faculty researchers during the crucial phases of implementation – managed this convincingly. The task-related deliverables were ready by the deadline (issues with the raging pandemic and logistics hurdles in software procurement notwithstanding) and submitted for scrutiny by the expert panel.
With over 100 entries from contestants worldwide, the Amrita team secured a place among the top 5. The triumphant team considers this as indeed a proud moment for Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore; and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham as a whole. This achievement by the students has been recognized in the form of a citation certificate (signed by the Senior VP of the Electronic Board System division of Siemens DISW). There are also prominent mentions of their feat in quite a few of the online public domains of Siemens and Mentor Graphics. The tremendous initiative was shown by Siemens AG in having given the undergraduate students of Amrita this wonderful opportunity to explore, improve and recognize their PCB design skills is highly praiseworthy.
