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I have a 4 layer board, with inner layers being power and ground. After laying out the components and completing the tracking I do a top layer flood as an additional ground plane. How should the two ground planes ideally be connected? [There are ground plane connections through ground vias near the components]

Dirk Bruere
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    Search for "stitching vias" on this site and google for help. – scld Apr 20 '15 at 13:47
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    I do not normally do this on my boards. If you do it, you need to carefully check for any copper which cannot be grounded with low impedance at RF. This means that the distance you travel on the copper shape to get to the GND plane must not be long, and must not go through any narrow areas. This check pretty much has to be done manually. Any copper which is not grounded at RF may become an unintentional patch antenna, and may also provide a coupling path for signals which would otherwise not have cross-talk. – user57037 Apr 21 '15 at 19:17
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    Wouldn't it be better to just not flood the top layer and keep your internal layer as your ground to reduce potential unwanted loops? – LMBooth Jun 06 '22 at 12:45

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