Dear experts, I have designed a mixed digital/RF board, which performs rather well, but we want it to perform even better in the next revision. The problem we are having is spurious components in the RF chain caused by the high harmonics of the DC/DC switching regulators. The regulators run at about 1.2 MHz and the band of our interest is roughly 50 to 90 MHz, although obviously, since it is a sampling system, much higher harmonics can be aliased into the band of interest... The absolute level of the offending components is -94 dBm and below, so it is in microvolts, which probably makes it more of an EMI sort of problem than a SI one. I believe, based on some experiments we did, that the problem is caused by the switching currents travelling in the ground planes. The board is quite dense and there is no easy way to divide it into an analog and digital sections... I was wondering if someone here has any experience in resolving this sort of problems? Also, what would be the best book to pick up on the subject? I looked at a few EMI/PCB design books on Amazon, but couldn't make my choice as their "look inside" feature is very limiting and wouldn't let me see the chapters I wanted... The books I am considering are Introduction to Electromagnetic Compatibility by Paul Clayton, Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronic Systems by Henry Ott, EMC & and the Printed Circuit Board by Mark Montrose... Thanks, ======================= Mikhail Matusov Senior Hardware Design Engineer Square Peg Communications Tel.: +1 (613) 271-0044 ext.231 Fax: +1 (613) 271-3007 http://www.squarepeg.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List technical documents are available at: http://www.si-list.net List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu