Customer Reviews

Signal Integrity - Simplified

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a real book. It is not one of those cut and paste jobs where "authors" throw together material covered in other places. This author has gone through pains to simplify things, explain common misconceptions, and add his own insights. All books should be written like this. I have read many books covering Signal Integrity and yet I still learned a few new ideas and it clarified things for me. It was a joy to read. There are a few things that could have been done better including some of the figures which look like they have been created by an amateur, but these don't take away from the overall good effort.

This book is vastly superior to some highly praised books on Signal Integrity like Hall, Hall, and McCall's book or like Dally's book. It might be too basic to compete with such "distinguished" books but those books can't touch this one in terms of being a real effort to explain things. If you want to progress to more advanced material I recommend the books by Bakoglu, H.B.; Howard Johnson; Brian Young; Ott, Henry; and Paul Clayton. Of course, signal integrity is no black magic and if you really want to progress you can read books on Microwaves ---a field where transmission lines & impedance matching networks were used long before signal integrity books became so popular.

I work in test and measurement as an Application Engineer and assist with Signal Integrity issues/solutions often. "Signal Integrity - Simplified", by Eric Bogatin, is one of the best fundamental overview books on Signal Integrity I have seen.

SI is a growing and vastly misunderstood segment of measurement and Dr. Bogatin does an excellent job at covering the fundamentals in a clear, concise and easy to understand fashion. His coverage of the core of SI is very thorough with entire chapters dedicated to Time and Frequency Domains, Impedance, Transmission Lines, Cross Talk as well as Differential Signals.

Unlike most engineering texts, "Signal Integrity - Simplified" covers key topics with a style that is more intuitive than mathematical. This is refreshing since, for complex topics, mathematical equations do not always speak to every engineer to clarify the issue. Dr. Bogatin uses a variety of word pictures as well as easily understandable diagrams to make his points. This is not to say the book is not technical, it is very technical (he introduces Maxwell's Equations) yet easier to understand than most for complex topics.

Each chapter provides a "Bottom Line" rather than a summary. These are numbered points of one or two sentences reinforcing the key concepts of the chapter. This makes for convenient and easy referral after reading the text. Throughout each chapter, Dr. Bogatin also provides "tips" to drive home a basic point and supply help or insight for the designer. These tips are easy to spot in the book as they are separated from the main text and labeled "tips". The tips alone are worth the price of the book.

Since Signal Integrity is an area effecting engineers working on high-speed products who have not typically had to deal with traditional RF/microwave effects, Dr. Bogatin does an excellent job presenting these rather daunting concepts simply so the designer is up to speed quickly.

The value this text brings is in its

-Intuitive style
-Tips
-Bottom Lines
-General Design Guidelines
-Rules of Thumb
-Appendixes with the Collected Guidelines and Rules of Thumb

This book is a must for your technical library and essential for SI engineers.

"Signal Integrity Simplified" is undoubtedly one of the best books that I have read on the subject. For a designer it is critically important to maintain a correct mental image of the electromagnetic effects that the design must take into account. Without a clear and balanced mental image flaws might be introduced in the design; corrective measures may not work as anticipated, and may even worsen the situation as is too often the case in the field of high-speed design and EMI control.

Contrary to many who focus on the algebraic developments without guiding the reader through the actual physical meaning of these developments, this book contributes to the establishment of a clear and solid mental image. I especially appreciated the treatment of inductance in chapter 6, as well as the use of field-solver images throughout the book, which help a great deal in visualizing the electromagnetic effects.

Even though it tackles an admitedly difficult subject, the book is actually very easy to read. It explains modern design practices with great clarity. In all honesty, I read it from cover to cover like a good novel! and, I might add, there are more than a few things that it finally helped me fully understand.

I was very pleased with this book. Not only does it cover a very useful area of design, it is very well written and very clear its approach to complex engineering. Although there are other books that cover similar material, I found this book to have a clear consise and pleasing delivery. I especially enjoyed that the author focused first on the basis of the problem - I liked the chapter on Inductance - and then folded the concepts into transmission lines. All the "controversial" elements are addessed from partial inductance to differential signalling. I have read many books on this subject and this one fits a nice niche between the heavy theoretical ( such as Clayton Pauls Tranmission Line)
to the very basic.

Overall - a very nice addition to anyones shelf!

I have read Black Magic by Johnson and believe that Bogatin's book is superior. I bought this book as a beginner hardware engineer and this book does a wonderful job of explaining and integrating different concepts I learned as an undergrad. Universities don't stress SI enough (even at my school, electromagnetics was optional), and Bogatin's book does an great job of integrating and enhancing what one is taught at the unversity level.
The reason I prefer this book over Black Magic is that it puts more effort into explaining the fundamentals of Signal Integrity (what causes it, how to fix, etc) rather than going in depth into the mathematical theory and calculations behind the phenomena. As engineers, we have computer programs that do much of this calculating for us and we need to understand "rules of thumb" that will help us design/test better in the future.
I believe this book is an excellent addition into any hardware engineer's library, as well as for students intersted in hardware design/test as a career.

Bogatin puts a lot of practical advice and details into this book. He goes down into the device physics of the circuit elements, in order to derive fundamental formulae for such quantities as the loop inductance of a circular loop. The text also explains ideas like a ground plane and power plane, and why you need to maximise the decoupling capacitance between power and ground.

Don't forget that this book is about chip design. So there is advice included on topics like via placements to minimise inductance. And practical tips on understanding lossy transmission lines.

The book does exhibit a US engineering bias. The units of measurement often include imperial units, like lengths in mils, or capacitance per length in pFarads per inch. Miserable choices. But if you use metric units, as you should, converting will be straightforward.

I had the excellent book High-Speed Digital Design A Handbook of Black Magic by Johnson and Graham but went ahead and bought this book. I'm glad I did. The two books cover the same subject quite differently and I think they are complementary.
Signal Integrity Simplified has many great layout/note tidbits mentioned by other reviewers but the one thing I really liked is that below each formula is an explaination of each variable in the formula, even if you should already know what the variable is from previous formulas and text. This makes it a good reference that doesn't have to be read linearly. In addition, the author gives an example of when each esoteric formula applies and I found myself saying over and over, "Oh, I do have that case in my design." In other words, the examples were exactly what layout or frequency range I was dealing with.
"Everyone" knows there are 3 basic circuit elements: resistors, capacitors, and inductors. But this book refers to the fourth, the transmission line. Much of the book is dedicated to this element, as it should be for a signal integrity book.
This book focuses on 100 Mhz to 4 Ghz designs. Any modern digital signal has rising/falling edge frequency components in that range. If you are doing board design, don't let the price scare you away, you need this or one of the other signal integrity books.
Geez, I sound like one of those glowing fake reviews but I can assure you I've no interest in the sales of this book and have been doing real circuit design for 25 years.

I love this book. The author does a great job of explaining the fundamentals, which makes it an easy reading. Rarely am I able to read a technical book cover to cover as I did with this book. Just as a comparison, other SI books go in depth with too much mathematics w/o explaining the underlying physical phenomena. Sometimes the equation derivation in those books are kinda skimpy, which may leave the readers frustrated. I think this is absolutely the best book for a someone new to this topic!

Too bad I couldn't give this book TEN stars (i.e., "FIVE Stars" is the highest available rating by Amazon.com).



I received the book "Signal Integrity" last week and took a glimpse of it and fell deeply in love with the author's writing style and organization (progression of thought). His thought progression reminds me somewhat of Sedra and Smith's Microelectronic Circuits, another wonderfully written textbook for undergraduates.



I wish this book as well as some others would have been around twenty years ago...Oh well, better late than never I suppose.



I applaud the author IMMENSELY for his ability to collate many design ideas and tips in this outstanding title.



May God bless him for his effort, and continue to do so. : )

It's an excellent book, written beautifully, crafting complex concepts from the very basics of electrical engineering. An excellent resource to get you started in the world if Signal Integrity.