Data Sheet

Silicon Labs
Page 38 of 45
Split a ground plane ONLY if you know exactly what you are doing. Splitting the plane may cause
more harm than good if applied incorrectly. The ground plane acts as a part of the antenna system.
Insufficient ground planes or large separate sensitive signal ground planes will easily cause the
coupled transmitted pulses to be AM-demodulated by semiconductor junctions around the board,
degrading system performance.
Overlapping GND layers without
GND stitching vias
Overlapping GND layers with
GND stitching vias shielding the
RF energy
Figure 14: Use of stitching vias to avoid emissions from the edges of the PCB