Crystal oscillator circuit in PCB Design - Real Business Scenario

Scenario Mode

👤 Your Role: You are an electronics design analyst at a manufacturing company.

📋 Request: Your manager wants a report on the performance and reliability of the crystal oscillator circuits used in recent PCB designs.

📊 Data: You have data on oscillator frequency stability, power consumption, failure rates, and production batch details for 10 recent PCB designs.

🎯 Deliverable: Create a dashboard showing frequency stability trends, power consumption comparisons, and failure rates by production batch.

Sample Data

PCB_ID	Batch	Frequency_MHz	Frequency_Stability_ppm	Power_mW	Failures	Total_Units
PCB001	BatchA	16.000	5	10	1	100
PCB002	BatchA	16.001	4	11	0	100
PCB003	BatchB	15.999	6	9	2	100
PCB004	BatchB	16.002	5	10	1	100
PCB005	BatchC	16.000	3	12	0	100
PCB006	BatchC	16.001	4	11	1	100
PCB007	BatchD	15.998	7	10	3	100
PCB008	BatchD	16.000	6	9	2	100
PCB009	BatchE	16.002	5	10	0	100
PCB010	BatchE	16.001	4	11	1	100

1

Step 1: Calculate the average frequency stability (in ppm) for each production batch.

Group data by Batch, then calculate AVG(Frequency_Stability_ppm) for each group.

Expected Result

BatchA: 4.5 ppm, BatchB: 5.5 ppm, BatchC: 3.5 ppm, BatchD: 6.5 ppm, BatchE: 4.5 ppm

2

Step 2: Calculate the average power consumption (in mW) for each production batch.

Group data by Batch, then calculate AVG(Power_mW) for each group.

Expected Result

BatchA: 10.5 mW, BatchB: 9.5 mW, BatchC: 11.5 mW, BatchD: 9.5 mW, BatchE: 10.5 mW

3

Step 3: Calculate the failure rate (%) for each batch as (SUM(Failures) / SUM(Total_Units)) * 100.

Group data by Batch, then calculate failure rate = (SUM(Failures) / SUM(Total_Units)) * 100.

Expected Result

BatchA: 0.5%, BatchB: 1.5%, BatchC: 0.5%, BatchD: 2.5%, BatchE: 0.5%

4

Step 4: Create a dashboard with three charts: a bar chart for average frequency stability by batch, a bar chart for average power consumption by batch, and a line chart for failure rate by batch.

Configure bar charts with X-axis=Batch, Y-axis=Average Frequency Stability and Average Power Consumption respectively; configure line chart with X-axis=Batch, Y-axis=Failure Rate.

Expected Result

Dashboard shows clear comparison of frequency stability, power consumption, and failure rates across batches.

5

Step 5: Add filters to the dashboard to allow viewing data by individual PCB_ID or by batch.

Add slicers or dropdown filters for PCB_ID and Batch fields.

Expected Result

User can filter dashboard to see detailed data for specific PCBs or batches.

Final Result

Frequency Stability (ppm) by Batch

BatchA |■■■■■     4.5
BatchB |■■■■■■■   5.5
BatchC |■■■■      3.5
BatchD |■■■■■■■■  6.5
BatchE |■■■■■     4.5

Power Consumption (mW) by Batch

BatchA |■■■■■■    10.5
BatchB |■■■■■     9.5
BatchC |■■■■■■■   11.5
BatchD |■■■■■     9.5
BatchE |■■■■■■    10.5

Failure Rate (%) by Batch

BatchA |--■       0.5%
BatchB |----■■■    1.5%
BatchC |--■       0.5%
BatchD |----■■■■■  2.5%
BatchE |--■       0.5%

✓Batch D has the highest failure rate at 2.5%, indicating potential quality issues.

✓Batch C shows the best frequency stability with the lowest average ppm of 3.5.

✓Power consumption varies slightly, with Batch C consuming the most power on average.

✓Filtering by PCB_ID helps identify specific units contributing to failures.

Bonus Challenge

Add a time series analysis to track frequency stability changes over production dates if date data is available.

Show Hint

Use production date as X-axis and average frequency stability as Y-axis in a line chart to observe trends over time.