Another very broad area of high frequency PCB design is the topic of grounding. Grounding is a problem area in itself for all analog and mixed-signal designs, and it can be said that simply implementing a PCB-based circuit does not change the fact that proper techniques are required. Fortunately, certain principles of quality grounding, namely the use of ground planes, are intrinsic to the PCB environment. This factor is one of the more significant advantages to PCB-based analog designs, and appreciable discussion in this section is focused on this issue.