An EMC book for practical engineers

Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering, by Henry W. Ott. John Wiley and Sons (www.wiley.com), 2009. 843 pages. $120.

By Kenneth Wyatt, Wyatt Technical Services -- Test & Measurement World, 12/3/2009 10:34:56 AM

Henry Ott is a well-known EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) expert and consultant, originally with AT&T Bell Labs. He wrote his first book, Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronic Systems, in 1977 with a second edition published in 1988. While the basic information in the second edition remains much the same, technology has rendered some of the concepts and solutions somewhat antiquated. So, I read Ott's latest work with great interest.

His new book, Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering, has 18 chapters, compared to 11 in the previous book. Nine of those chapters are completely rewritten. It also includes six appendices, including an important one deriving the concept of partial inductances. He covers analog, digital, and mixed-signal circuit design principles at frequencies from audio through gigahertz clock frequencies.

New material includes digital circuit power distribution, conducted emissions, RF and transient immunity, PCB (printed-circuit board) layout, stackup testing, and precompliance testing. Ott strives to balance the theory with practical applications gleaned from his years as a consultant. He explains EMC theory so you can easily understand it. He includes solved problems that make the book appropriate for upper-level college courses.

I came away very impressed with the content in Ott's latest book. It's written for the working product designer-not for those trying to learn the theory. Ott includes just enough theory to explain the basic concepts, often using several practical examples. I like that approach because engineers rarely have time to delve too deeply into EMC theory to solve compliance issues. Understanding the basics gives you a chance to apply possible fixes to EMC problems.

Ott uses the term "ground plane" in the book, but I would have preferred "signal return plane" and "power return plane." While the term "ground plane" is commonly used, it can be misleading because it doesn't specifically account for return current flow. In addition, recent research on decoupling capacitor placement, circuit layout, and cancellation techniques from Missouri University of Science & Technology (scholarsmine.mst.edu) was not included. This is relatively minor, because you should be able to extrapolate the basic concepts that Ott describes and apply to ball-grid arrays and other high-pin-count devices along with their associated decoupling capacitor networks.

Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering is a complete EMC reference for product designers. It should let you achieve some success in product qualification. If I were to own just one book on EMC design, this would be the one.

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