Customer Reviews:
 Signal Propagation by Howard Johnson January 30, 2010
Gary R. Bosworth (Malibu, CA USA)
Quick delivery. Quality product. Filled with essential data. Interesting and illucidating explanations of high-speed electrical phenomenon. An essential publication for all electronic engineer's bookshelves. I am a very happy customer.
Great reference November 9, 2008
Leo Chang (Fremont, CA USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
With the electronics moving into GHz bandwidth, this is a great reference and teaching book that you need within your reach all the time.
A must have reference for ALL digital design engineers July 5, 2003
Scott Gemmell (Brisbane, QLD AUSTRALIA)
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
After ploughing through this book, I found it to be a treasure trove of useful information. It's well layed out, and well explained. As with their first "black magic text", it's full of helpful hints, guides, and rule'o'thumbs that will get you up to speed quickly so you can apply them and get expected results from your design. Well done Mr Johnson and Mr Graham, another excellent reference!
 Great subject material, unevenly covered July 22, 2003
Ozdal Barkan (Mountain View, CA United States)
47 out of 47 found this review helpful
I had mixed feelings reading this book. Some sections were so good I was saying, "Bravo, well done" while other sections were so bad, I felt sorry for anyone trying to learn by reading them. (E.g. Ch4 on frequency domain modeling.) The book covers extremely useful material, but in an uneven way. It will especially appeal to readers who want simplified discussions of the ideas rather than deeper more theoretical discussions. For example, crosstalk --one of the most important topics, is covered in a very light manner, recommending use of simulators to obtain accurate results. Compare this with the coverage of the same subject in the remarkable book "Electromagnetic Compatibility" by Clayton Paul. Now, that book is "advanced" and "magical". This book doesn't get into any deep discussions of the fundamentals. It says that current flows in a loop, and inductance is related to loop area. Simple enough. Yet, how do we explain the inductance of the pin of an IC package, which is definitely not a loop? How is the energy-based definition of inductance used by simulators related to this simple definition? Even more fundamental, given that voltage can't be defined in a region where the magnetic field is changing, how come we can use the concept of voltage? (Read Paul Clayton for discussing all these concepts in great detail.) Many previous articles are included in the book. Although some of them are entertaining (e.g. the pot hole story) most are just disturbances, and even worse, outdated and contradictory to authors later approach. For example, Dr. Johnson spends 3 pages! discussing how close a termination has to be, and drives an equation for the amount of reflection when the ideal termination is slightly away from the source. Later in a witty article the author declares that there is no more any excuse for not using simulation tools. He says "If you have to ask, simulate it." Definitely anybody who is wondering if their termination is close enough can download a free demo copy of PSpice and simulate this quickly and accurately.Nobody is going to use the equation the author drived and there is no new insight or theory developed either. The author being the editor of the IEEE Ethernet specs, it is quite surprising how many sloppy mistakes there are. (KHz, kHz, Ghz, HZ,Hertz, hertz, pS, ps, ohm, Ohm, V, v, ; with and without spaces after the value are used with no consistency, "it's" is confused for "its" in more than one place, wrong equation numbers, irregular figures, mixed fonts and fonts sizes within the same equation, etc. are common occurrence.) Despite its problems, this book will be a very useful reference book to people working in the field. Many sections have excellent detailed discussions. For example, performance regions of the transmission line breaking it into lumped, RC, LC, skin effect, dielectric loss, and waveguide dispersion regions is the most comprehensive I have seen. A useful book to add to one's library, but not a book lover's delight.
the "signal integrity" bible May 13, 2007
Douglas L. Datwyler (UTAH)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dr. Johnson gives signal integrity an identity, and tells you how to conquer a truly "black art" in electronics engineering.
As the data rates of electrical signals go up, the problems this causes are detailed, and solutions are presented that resolve the problems.
If youare doing high-speed digital design, high precision analog design, and want to make it work, this violume sheds light on the "dark" places.
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