Research on Automatic PCB Routing Strategy based on Ant Colony Algorithm

In the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs), routing is a critical step that affects their performance and quality. Traditional manual wiring methods are not only time-consuming and error-prone, but also difficult to meet the design requirements of modern high-density and high-performance circuit boards. In this paper, an automatic PCB routing strategy based on ant colony algorithm is investigated, aiming to improve the routing efficiency and quality. Ant colony algorithm, as a swarm intelligent optimisation algorithm, has better robustness and constraints and is suitable for solving complex wiring problems. In this paper, we focus on two common wiring requirements, equal-length wiring and differential pair wiring. For equal length cabling, each line is optimised to meet the length matching requirement by setting the maximum length value and minimum length value using the ant colony algorithm. For differential pair wiring, firstly, the equidistance of signal lines is ensured by the method of two ants walking at the same time, and then the length of the line is fine-tuned to ensure that the length of the two signal lines is the same. The experimental results show that the improved ant colony algorithm has strong convergence and optimisation ability under the constraints of equal-length wiring and differential pair wiring, which provides an effective solution for PCB automatic wiring.