Electronic design services: PCB, firmware, EMC certification

We contract on the deliverable, not on hours: a pre-production optimized working prototype on the first attempt, at a fixed price agreed before work starts. AESTECHNO is an independent electronic design house (an electronic design company, or in French a bureau d'études électronique) based in Montpellier, France, that designs, develops and industrializes custom electronic boards.

We work for industrial clients in France, the rest of Europe and the United States. Our core business is turning a specification into a CE/FCC certified product ready for series production, with hardware design, firmware, EMC and certification handled in-house.

The method is right-first-time design: six steps with contractual EVT/DVT/PVT milestones, EMC designed in from the schematic and checked by in-house pre-scan before the accredited lab, and a long-life BOM with A/B alternates locked in at schematic capture, so the product design is already the production design.

Contents

• Our electronic design services
• Our 6-step methodology
• EVT/DVT/PVT milestones
• Our engagement model: fixed price on the deliverable
• Sectors and standards
• Where we work
• Who holds which certification, and why it matters
• Transparency on cost categories
• Common pitfalls and field reports
• Example: low-power industrial IoT sensor
• How long does an electronics design project take?
• Bottom line
• Buyer questions we get asked before signing

Our electronic design services

Electronic design services are the engineering work that takes a product from an idea to a manufacturable board: system architecture, schematic capture, PCB layout, embedded firmware, RF, EMC and the certification file. At AESTECHNO, that whole scope sits under one roof, with one technical point of contact and no cascaded subcontracting, from blank page to production transfer and volume manufacturing support.

Not every product needs a custom board: an off-the-shelf module, or a carrier built around a standard module, is often enough, and we say so. Our COTS vs custom electronics comparison helps you decide. When custom is the right call, the offer covers:

• PCB and schematic design (from standard multilayer boards up to 28-layer HDI, laser micro-vias, rigid-flex, integrated antennas). See our PCB design methodology.
• Embedded firmware and real-time software on Zephyr, FreeRTOS, Yocto and embedded Linux. Details in our industrial embedded software guide.
• RF and antenna design up to 10 GHz, RED 2014/53/EU certification. See our RF PCB design page.
• EMC and CE/FCC certification with internal pre-scans before the accredited lab. See our approach to electromagnetic compatibility and CE/RED IoT certification.
• IoT and wireless connectivity: Bluetooth (including 5.4 PAwR), Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, LTE-M, 5G. See LPWAN and Bluetooth.
• IoT product cybersecurity aligned with the Cyber Resilience Act. See IoT cybersecurity.
• Industrialization and DFM: prototype-to-series transition with a complete file. See DFM and industrialization.

Our 6-step methodology: from spec to pre-series

Our methodology is a sequence of six steps that take a product from specification to pre-series. Each one produces verifiable deliverables and closes on a decision gate: at every step you know what is settled, what is still at risk and what the next phase costs. Three contractual milestones, EVT, DVT and PVT, punctuate the path and give you a measurable decision right before committing to the next phase, with a written go or no-go and the evidence attached.

Scoping & architecture

We pin down the requirements (function, environment, safety, cost and volume) and build the architecture: power, compute, radio and security. Radio choices draw on our RF PCB design with RED certification, and industrial IoT device cybersecurity is set at the architecture stage. You get: block diagrams, a preliminary BOM and a risk analysis (ISO 14971 for a medical device).

Schematic & long-life BOM

We select non-NRND references with identified A/B alternates and ESD/TVS protections, and bring in the EMC constraints at this stage. Planning for component obsolescence and shortages starts at the initial BOM. You get: a verified schematic and an available, long-lived BOM.

EMC-driven PCB routing

Stack-up, controlled impedances, EMC and testability are decided here, in Altium Designer. We calculate impedances in ANSYS and Simbeor and simulate the fast buses (DDR, PCIe, USB 3.x) in ANSYS before final routing. Layer-count and stack-up trade-offs are covered in our PCB stack-up and impedance guide, fast buses in our high-speed PCB design page, and manufacturability rules in our guide to design for manufacturing.

Prototyping & bring-up

Our PCB and assembly partners build the prototypes, then bring-up follows a methodical checklist: power rails, clocks, memories, interfaces. On high-speed buses, our Tektronix oscilloscope with the TekExpress suite runs PCI Express, USB 3.x, MIPI, DDR, HDMI, Ethernet and LVDS compliance tests in-house, before the accredited lab. Most design firms our size subcontract that measurement.

Embedded firmware

In parallel with the hardware, we develop the firmware: HAL, drivers, radio stacks, RTOS, signed OTA via MCUboot with rollback, and a CI/CD pipeline with hardware-in-the-loop tests. The operating system is chosen on the product's constraints: our Zephyr vs FreeRTOS vs Linux comparison sets out the criteria.

Validation & compliance

We prepare CE marking against the applicable directives (RED, EMC, LVD, RoHS) and check compliance with an in-house EMC pre-scan before the accredited-lab campaign. For connected products, the Cyber Resilience Act (EU regulation 2024/2847) has required vulnerability reporting since 11 September 2026, ahead of full application on 11 December 2027. According to ENISA's IoT security guidance and NIST IR 8259, IoT security must be anchored in the product architecture from the start, not added as a patch. Our guide to electromagnetic compatibility and our article on electronic product testing and validation cover this step in depth.

EVT/DVT/PVT milestones: contractual commitments

An EVT, DVT or PVT milestone is a checkpoint written into the contract, with measurable pass criteria and a client decision right, written into the contract rather than left to judgment on the day. EVT (Engineering Validation Test) validates the working prototype, DVT (Design Validation Test) validates the product against its requirements and EMC pre-compliance, and PVT (Production Validation Test) qualifies the pre-series and the test benches. We design those benches (ICT, functional test, serial-number traceability) and, when required, the PPAP file. The criteria for each gate are detailed in our product design methodology, and the move to volume in our guide on electronic product industrialization.

Our engagement model: fixed price on the deliverable

Our engagement model is a fixed price on the deliverable rather than an hourly rate on effort. We contract on the delivery of a pre-production optimized working prototype on the first attempt, at a price agreed before the work starts, so the budget is a number you approve up front instead of a running total you discover at the end.

American buyers are usually offered three models by name: Fixed Price, Time and materials (T&M) and a dedicated team. We name ours the same way, because a supplier that will not name its model is asking you to guess. Scope, acceptance criteria and price are settled before the first schematic sheet is opened, and the milestone the money hangs on is a prototype that works.

A fixed price needs a written scope. That is the precondition most suppliers leave unsaid. A project nobody has scoped yet can't honestly be quoted at a fixed price, and a supplier who quotes one anyway recovers the difference in change orders. So we write the scope at the end of a short scoping phase, and a later change of scope goes through a priced change order rather than a quiet drift in the budget.

T&M is not the weaker choice either. On real exploration (does this architecture hold, which of two radio chains wins, what is causing an uncharacterized EMC failure) a fixed price forces someone to put a number on an unknown, which means padding it. On bounded exploration, T&M costs you less and lets you stop the moment the answer arrives; unbounded, it is the model that runs away from you. An exploratory study, a rescue on a design somebody else started, or a specification that is still moving deserve a short scoped phase first. The contract carries the commitment; this page only describes how we work.

Why the commitment is defensible. Signal and power integrity are simulated in ANSYS HFSS and SIwave before fabrication, EMC is designed in from the schematic and pre-scanned in our own lab, the layout is done by an IPC CID+ certified designer, and every gate closes on written pass criteria. American teams usually name the hardware ladder MVP, EVT, DVT, PVT; our contractual milestones are the last three, and the first working build is the one the fixed price is attached to. Our record: 100% success rate on CE/FCC certifications, across dozens of campaigns run over more than 10 years of practice.

Proof in volume. A custom COM Express carrier board for Intel processors that we designed has been shipping in the thousands of units per year for three years, with no manufacturing-driven redesign and no support call back to us. Our other project classes, described without naming clients because our projects are under NDA: radar, LIDAR and SDR (RF + FPGA acquisition chains, several RF projects up to 10 GHz) and medical devices, including a device that achieved Class IIb certification. All of them are on our work page.

Sectors and standards

A sector standard is the set of safety, performance and compliance requirements that applies in a given domain, and we identify it at scoping, never during certification: it shapes the architecture, the PCB routing and the test strategy, so the lab pass holds no surprises. Depending on the product, that covers IEC 60601-1 and IEC 62304 for medical together with ISO 13485 and ISO 14971, industrial EMC per CISPR 11/32 and IEC 61000-4-x, the RED 2014/53/EU directive for radio, and the Cyber Resilience Act for connected products.

• Consumer and industrial: CE / RED / EMC / LVD / RoHS. These directives cover the majority of electronic products marketed in Europe.
• Medical: ISO 13485 (quality system), IEC 60601-1 (electrical safety), IEC 62304 (software life cycle), ISO 14971 (risk management). We work with specialized partners for qualification and testing.
• Vision and AI compute: NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX with a custom Yocto BSP, MIPI-CSI camera integration, and industrialization support for high-power AI silicon.

Our detailed article on CE/RED certification for IoT products explains the process step by step.

Where we work

Electronic design is a service delivered remotely, which changes how you should choose a supplier. Schematics, routing, design reviews, firmware and certification files move over video calls and file exchange, so physical proximity is not a selection criterion for an electronics design firm, unlike a maintenance provider.

We work from Grabels, in the Montpellier metropolitan area, with industrial clients across France: in Occitanie (Toulouse, Nîmes), in Franche-Comté and in the Hauts-de-France. Travel is reserved for the moments that justify it: kickoff, critical design reviews, bench bring-up and EMC campaigns at an accredited lab. The rest of a project does not depend on distance.

Europe and North America are equally part of the markets we take work in. At that range the question becomes regulatory: CE marking and the RED directive on one side, FCC authorization on the other, with different test campaigns and different files. We cover that gap in our guide to what hardware and firmware design services cost, which also carries the third-party lab ranges for a CE, RED and FCC campaign.

Who holds which certification, and why it matters

Certification is a split responsibility, yet buyers searching for a "certified electronics manufacturer" are usually looking for one supplier holding every certificate. That supplier does not really exist, because design competence and production quality are certified by different schemes, awarded to different kinds of organization.

On the design side, our designer is IPC CID+ certified (Advanced Certified Interconnect Designer). It is not a self-declaration: according to IPC, the plain CID is a mandatory prerequisite, and the CID+ examination covers fabrication materials, electrical and signalling issues, complex component mounting strategies and high-end design. It is awarded by IPC, the body that publishes the IPC-2221 and IPC-6012 standards our layouts are built against, and it does not expire.

On the production side, we work with ISO 13485-certified manufacturing partners. ISO 13485 certifies a quality-management system, and its scope varies: it can cover design (clause 7.3), manufacturing, or both. The useful question to ask a supplier is not "are you ISO 13485 certified?" but "what exactly does your certificate cover?". For our part, we do not hold an ISO 13485 certificate: we design to the standard and to ISO 14971, and produce a traceable design file a certified workshop can build without reinterpreting it. That is the link we hold, and we manage the handover to the second one.

Transparency on cost categories

A cost category is an identifiable budget line, and five of them make up the budget of an electronics project: design engineering, prototype iterations, testing and EMC pre-compliance, accredited-lab certification, and industrialization with its test benches. Their relative weight is steered from the architecture stage, where the PCB layer count, the selected components and the certification scope for each target market are decided. Steering them early keeps the budget an engineering variable rather than a surprise, whether the product is a simple sensor or a computing board.

• Engineering: architecture, schematic, PCB routing, firmware and tests. The main share, smoothed across milestones for financial visibility at every step.
• Prototypes: PCB fabrication, assembly, specific components. The number of iterations drives this line.
• Tests and certification: in-house EMC pre-scans reduce the risk of failure at the accredited lab, and with it the certification cost.
• AESTECHNO accelerators: proven libraries (power supplies, MCU, radios), test bench templates and pre-configured CI pipelines.

To optimize production cost from the design stage, see our guide on DFM (Design for Manufacturing) in electronics.

Common pitfalls and field reports

The same mistakes recur from project to project, and each one is paid for in a respin, a failed certification or an industrialization delay. At AESTECHNO, we have observed that five of them dominate, and we apply a systematic counter to each:

• EMC discovered at certification: we run EMC pre-scans from the end of EVT, before the accredited lab (see our electromagnetic compatibility guide).
• Unplanned obsolescence: NRND/EOL status checked and alternates identified when the BOM is created (see component shortages).
• Firmware started too late: we start it at EVT with hardware-in-the-loop tests.
• An undersized stack-up: shortcuts on layers and ground planes are paid for at EMC certification.
• Testability added at the end: test points, JTAG/SWD access and production connectors go in at initial routing.

Our guide to electronic project risk management shows how we track these risks from one gate to the next.

Example project: low-power industrial IoT sensor

On a recent project, we designed an autonomous, battery-powered industrial sensor with a target battery life of several years without maintenance. We selected an ultra-low-power MCU with aggressive sleep modes and fast wake-up. Communication relies on LoRaWAN, chosen for its range/consumption trade-off in industrial environments. We optimized the power supply to minimize standby current: reduced radio duty cycle, peripherals shut down in sleep, current measured to the microampere.

For similar projects, see our guides on embedded power management and LPWAN technologies (LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, Sigfox).

How long does an electronics design project take?

Project duration is the time between a validated specification and a delivered pre-series, and it depends on product complexity and its regulatory frame. As an indication, a simple IoT sensor is designed in 4 to 6 months. An industrial product with RF constraints, strict EMC and RED certification requires 9 to 14 months. A medical device under IEC 60601-1 and IEC 62304 typically takes 18 to 24 months, because of the documentation requirements of ISO 13485.

In-house vs external design? An internal team looks cheaper, but its full cost includes CAD and simulation tooling, an EMC pre-scan lab and firmware CI/CD infrastructure. An outside design firm amortizes those costs across clients and brings the cross-project experience that an internal team cannot reproduce on its own. We recommend evaluating both models on the same project scope before deciding.

Bottom line: what a top-tier electronic design company delivers

A top-tier electronic design company delivers boards that are ready to certify and ready to manufacture, by treating EMC, BOM longevity, firmware and industrialization as concurrent disciplines rather than sequential ones. At AESTECHNO, our signature fits in one sentence: product design IS production design, with compliance designed in from the schematic, not added at the end of the cycle.

• Fixed price on the deliverable, NDA before any technical exchange, native source files handed over.
• 6-step methodology with contractual EVT/DVT/PVT milestones.
• EMC designed in from the schematic and checked by in-house pre-scan before the accredited lab.
• Design-only, redesign or a full programme through to pre-series.

Related articles

To deepen your knowledge of electronic design and industrialization:

• High-performance electronics project: a decision-maker's guide (simulation before fabrication, 7 questions to ask).
• PCB design: stack-up, impedance, EMC, advanced techniques for routing, stackup and design for manufacturing.
• Industrial embedded software guide, RTOS firmware development with a complete validation methodology.
• Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), pre-scans and strategies to pass RED/EMC certifications.
• RF PCB design, radio circuits, antennas and RED certification.
• CE/RED certification for IoT products, process and lead times to certify your connected products.
• Design for Manufacturing (DFM), cost-cutting playbook for electronic products.
• Electronic component shortages, BOM strategy and second-source planning.

FAQ: Electronic board design

How can I cut costs in series production?
Series cost optimization starts at the design stage: a DFM approach to reduce assembly steps, components with identified BOM alternates, and fast test benches to lower production cycle time. Standardizing PCB form factors and reducing the number of unique references also helps lower unit costs.

Can you take over an existing design?
Yes. We start with an audit of the existing design covering EMC, security, DfM and testability, then draft a prioritized remediation plan and run a targeted respin on the problem areas, without starting from scratch.

Buyer questions we get asked before signing

What do I get when the project is finished?
The complete design package: schematic and PCB source files in their native CAD format, Gerber and drill files, assembly drawings and pick-and-place data, the bill of materials with its qualified alternates, firmware sources and build scripts, the bring-up and test procedures, the production test-bench definition, and the CE technical file with the pre-scan and accredited-lab reports. The test that matters is simple: a contract manufacturer should be able to build the product from that package without calling us.

Can one partner cover the board, the firmware and the cloud side?
Yes. We design the PCB, write the firmware on Zephyr, FreeRTOS or a custom Yocto BSP for embedded Linux, set up the CI/CD pipelines that test and deploy it, and we have also designed and deployed a high-availability database cluster for an IoT platform, covering the chain from sensor to gateway to database. Our IoT database comparison shows how we choose that data layer. One team owning the whole chain means one party answerable for an interface that fails between board and backend.

Can you guarantee the quality of the product?
We contract on the deliverable rather than on hours, and the commitment is a pre-production optimized working prototype on the first attempt for a fixed price agreed up front. The contract carries that commitment, not a slogan on a web page. The evidence behind it: a 100% success rate on CE/FCC certifications, across dozens of campaigns run over more than 10 years of practice, and a COM Express carrier board we designed that has shipped in volume for three years with no manufacturing-driven redesign.

My device needs CE and FCC certification. Can you help me comply with it?
Yes, and we design for it from the schematic instead of testing for it at the end. On the European side we cover the RED 2014/53/EU, EMC 2014/30/EU and Low Voltage 2014/35/EU directives plus RoHS, assemble the technical file and run the EMC pre-scan in our own lab before the accredited lab. On the US side we prepare the FCC Part 15 route in the same campaign, which costs on the order of 20 to 30 percent more than CE and RED alone because the test set is nearly the same. One caution: a pre-certified radio module does not certify your product. The finished device still needs its own EMC testing.

Can you estimate the cost of the final device before it's built?
Yes, for the unit cost of the device itself, which is usually the number that decides whether the product has a business case. We build a preliminary bill of materials at the architecture stage and price it at your target volume, then add the bare PCB (layer count, technology class, panel yield), assembly complexity, enclosure and the test time per unit. It starts as a range and narrows at each gate as the BOM freezes.

What we will not do is put a device cost on a product whose architecture does not exist yet, because one layer of stack-up or one radio choice moves that number more than any negotiation will.

Who are your customers?
Industrial, medical and connected-product companies, from startups to established manufacturers: 59 clients and 65 projects delivered since we were founded in 2022. They sit across France and the rest of Europe, and the United States is a market we serve. Most engagements are covered by an NDA, so we describe classes of project rather than names: radar, lidar, SDR, embedded Linux compute, high-voltage power supplies, low-power IoT sensors.