No gadget in this episode, I thought instead I’d write about a book I purchased recently.  It is Eric Bogatin’s “Signal and Power Integrity — Simplified” second edition.

Like most of you, I’ve got a few shelves full of textbooks and other technical books that I’ve collected over the years.  Some are pretty dated, some are unopened, a few I refer to fairly regularly.

When I received this book from my favorite online bookshop, www.dulcebreadandbookshop.com, I sat right down to read it and got through most of it over the course of the next few nights.  I don’t work in PCB design, and signal integrity isn’t part of my job, but I really enjoyed the book.

Part of it is the material.  In college the electromagnetics classes were my favorite.  In graduate school I very nearly got my degree in it, but switched to digital design at the last minute.  At that time there didn’t seem to be much future in wireless other than defense contracting — whoops.  Reading this book took me back to those days of Smith charts, standing waves, and drinking beer at the Dixie Chicken.

The other thing I liked about the book is the presentation and style.  Not only does Eric Bogatin know the material, he is able to write in a very clear style.  Equations are presented and explained intuitively rather than with long and dense derivations.  Rules of thumb abound, along with cautions on when they are appropriate versus solutions provided by 2D or 3D field solvers.

Bogatin starts out easy, explaining what signal integrity is and why it is important.  There is a review of the time and frequency domains, impedance, and the physical basis of resistance, capacitance, and inductance.  The tour continues with transmission lines, ideal and lossy, crosstalk, differential impedance, and ends up with a discussion of S parameters and designing low impedance power distribution networks.  I highly recommend the book for people working in or interested in signal integrity.

You may also want to visit the author’s WWW page, www.bethesignal.com, which has articles, recorded lectures, IEEE certification programs, and more.

Send in your gadget!

Design News is always looking for new gadets to feature in the print edition of the magazine.  Mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, whatever.  Believe me, if they’ll run my hot rodded Billy Bass they’ll run anything.  If you’ve creating something clever and would like to see it in print, submit it to the Design News editors:

http://www.designnews.com/file/25333-Submit_Your_Gadget_Freak_Design.pdf

You’ll get the thrill of seeing your product show up in a print magazine right in your mailbox, and you’ll get a check for $500 as well.

Steve Ravet

Design News Gadgeteer.