12.1.1 Board Stackup

There is no fundamental information about how many layers should be used and how the board stackup should look. Again, the easiest way the get good results is to use the design from the EVMs of TI. The magazine Elektronik Praxis has published an article with an analysis of different board stackups. These are listed in Table 4. Generally, the use of microstrip traces needs at least two layers, whereas one of them must be a GND plane. Better is the use of a 4-layer PCB, with a GND and a VCC plane and two signal layers. If the circuit is complex and signals must be routed as stripline, because of propagation delay and/or characteristic impedance, a 6-layer stackup should be used.