For best overall performance, place all circuit components on the same side of the circuit board. Furthermore, place these components as near as practical to the respective LDO pin connections. Place ground return connections to the input and output capacitor, and to the LDO ground pin as close to each other as possible. Use wide, component-side, copper surface for these connections. To avoid negative system performance, do not use vias and long traces to the input and output capacitors. The grounding and layout scheme illustrated in Figure 7-5 minimizes inductive parasitics, and thereby reduces load-current transients, minimizes noise, and increases circuit stability.

To improve performance, use a ground reference plane, either embedded in the PCB or placed on the bottom side of the PCB opposite the components. This reference plane provides accuracy of the output voltage and shields noise. Additionally, this reference plane behaves similar to a thermal plane to spread (or sink) heat from the LDO device when connected to the thermal pad. In most applications, this ground plane is necessary to meet thermal requirements.