Signal Integrity Issues 
and Printed Circuit Board Design

Douglas Brooks

Prentice Hall, 2003
ISBN  0-13-141884-X

At last! Here is a book written for the PCB designer without a technical degree that covers all the basic high-speed design issues we need to know about today. It is written by Doug Brooks, engineer, author, and seminar leader in the easy to understand manner he is known for. And it covers EVERYTHING his high-speed design seminars cover, and more.

(Looking for "Electrical Engineering for the Non-Degreed Engineer"? Check the note at the bottom of the page.)

For information on how to purchase, click here.

To go to the book's RESOURCE PAGE click here.

The 400-page book is organized into three Parts. Part 1 covers basic engineering topics. It is oriented towards the designer who does not have a 4-year electrical engineering degree. It covers the basics of what resistors, capacitors and inductors are, and how they combine to create resistance, reactance and impedance. Hydraulic analogs are used to help the reader visualize concepts. Time constants (both RC and L/R), and their importance, are also covered in Part 1.

Part 2 covers signal integrity issues. There are primarily four main topics designers need to be familiar with: EMI, Crosstalk, Transmission Lines (both single ended and differential), and bypass capacitor decoupling. Doug goes into these four topics (and more) in detail , explaining what they are, why they can be a problem on our boards, and then how to design our boards with these areas in mind. Other chapters in this part cover power supply systems and power plane considerations, and a look into the future with lossy transmission lines, eye diagrams, and transmission line equalization.

Finally Part 3 includes an extensive Appendix covering a variety of other topics including Doug's well-known explanation of why inductors induct, complex algebra and imaginary numbers, logarithms, and the principles behind TDRs and VNAs.

Here are some relevant links:

            1. A picture of the front cover

            2. A picture of the back cover

            3. A summary Table of Contents

            4. A complete Table of Contents  (pdf file)

Here is the cover of the Chinese version, available through Chinese booksellers:

Note: UltraCAD used to offer two self-published books, "Electrical Engineering for the Non-Degreed Engineer" and "Signal Integrity Issues." These two publications have been combined (and more) and included in this new book, published by Prentice Hall. We no longer offer the self-published books because the new book is a MUCH better alternative, both from a content standpoint and a price standpoint.

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