Henry Ott Consultants

Would you like to have a mini-library on EMC and Signal Integrity that covers the frequency range from DC to light (well almost ---  it actually goes to 10's of GHz)?  The following three books, all highly recommended, will accomplish that.  All the books are very practical with a minimum amount of mathematics, and there is very little overlap between the material contained in each of the books.  I use all three of the books regularly.  The three books are:
 

• Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering, by Henry W Ott, published by Wiley Interscience in 2009.
• High-Speed Digital Design, by Howard Johnson and Marty Graham, published by Prentice Hall  in 1993.
• High-Speed Digital System Design, by Stephen H. Hall, Garrett W. Hall, and James A. McCall, published by Wiley Interscience in 2000.

The books should be read in the order listed.  Not only are all three books very readable, but they are also very useful to use as a reference when designing.  You can just pick one up and look at the section of particular interest. The first book is about 900 pages, the second  450 pages, and the third 350 pages.
 
 

The Ott book (2009) is considered by many to be "the bible on EMC."  It is the most comprehensive book on the subject and is the first EMC book you should read.  It is a complete rewrite and expansion of the author's best selling book Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronic Systems, 2nd Edition. In addition to the core subjects of cabling, grounding, balancing, filtering and, shielding that made the author's previous book such a wide success, this new book includes additional coverage of equipment and system grounding, switching power supplies and variable speed motor drives, digital circuit power didtribution and decoupling, PCB layout and stackup, mixed-signal PCB layout, rf and transient immunity, power line disturbances and, precompliance EMC measurements. In addition there are new appendices on dipole antennas, the theory of partial inductance, and the ten most common EMC problems. Written in the author's easy to read and understand style, it's full of real-life practical examples.  In addition the characteristics of passive components, contact protection, intrinsic noise sources, active device noise, and electrostatic discharge are all discussed. Each chapter contains problems for the reader to work out (251 in all), with answers included in the appendix as well as a list of extensive references. The  book also has an extensive index which makes finding what you want easy.  This book contains 18 chapters, 6 appendices, 566 figures, and 872 pages.  This book won the 2009 "Prose Award" for the best book published in the category of "Engineering & Technology" published in 2009.
 
 
 
 
 

The Johnson & Graham book (1993) picks up where the Ott books leaves off with respect to high-speed digital circuits.  Despite it's title this is more an EMC book  than a classical digital design book.  Its subtitle, "A Handbook of Black Magic," gives away its true focus.  Besides containing much practical information on the EMC aspects of high-speed digital design the book also contains useful information on various measurement techniques that can be used to measure such things as power-ground plane impedance, metastable states, etc.  Subjects include chapters on transmission lines, terminations, vias, clock distribution, clock oscillators, ribbon cables and connectors, layer stack-up, and power distribution.  Many subjects  covered relate to signal integrity issues as well, such as transmission lines, clock skew and jitter, terminations, vias, etc.  The book is considered by many as a "crossover book" covering both EMC and signal integrity issues.  Everything in the book is easy to read and practical.  This is a "must have" book if you are designing high-speed digital circuits.  This book contains twelve chapters, three appendices, and contains 447 pages.
 
 

The Hall, Hall, & McCall book (2000) continues where the Johnson and Graham book ends.  This book is a signal integrity book.  It is well written with a good balance between theory and practical applications.  The first sentence of the book sets the tone of the book, it reads, "The speed of light is just too slow." Subjects include transmission line considerations, crosstalk, IC package and pin-out considerations , power delivery and decoupling, non ideal current return paths, simultaneous switching noise, timing and skew considerations, and radiation.  The book also includes a chapter on design methodologies useful in the design of high-speed systems with a very large number of variables. This chapter attempts to make an intractable problem tractable. As does the Johnson & Graham book, this book also contains a chapter on high-speed measurement techniques. The information contained in this book is useful at both the chip as well as the PCB level.  Although some of the subjects covered in this book are the same as the Johnson & Graham book there is very little overlap in the actual material.  This book contains eleven chapters, six appendices, and contains 347 pages.
 

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