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:
 

• Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronic Systems, Second Edition, by Henry W Ott, published by Wiley Interscience in 1988.
• 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 can you read all three of these books but they are 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 two books are both about 450 pages, the third book is a little smaller at about 350 pages.
 
 

The Ott book is considered by many to be "the bible on EMC."  It is the first book you should read on EMC.  It covers the basic subjects of cabling, grounding, balancing, filtering, and shielding.  Analog and digital circuits are covered, as well as the subjects of emission and susceptibility/immunity.  In addition the characteristics of passive components, contact protection, intrinsic noise sources, active device noise, and electrostatic discharge are all discussed. The appendix includes problems related to the material in each chapter as well as answers to the problems.  Two chapters are included on digital circuit design, one on digital circuit noise and layout and the other on controlling digital circuit radiation.  Each chapter contains a list of extensive references and the book contains an extensive index which makes finding what you want easy.  This book contains twelve chapters, six appendices, and contains 448 pages.
 
 
 
 
 

The Johnson & Graham book 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 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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