A valuable 180-page book called “Create Your Own EMC Troubleshooting Kit: Essential Tools for EMC Troubleshooting” by EMC guru Ken Wyatt is the first volume in Wyatt’s EMC troubleshooting series. It covers the benefits of creating a personal EMC troubleshooting kit and also defines which products to include. Individual chapters name suitable spectrum analyzers, near-field probes, current probes, antennas, oscilloscopes, harmonic comb generators, and broadband preamplifiers.

Electronic products can emit unwanted electromagnetic radiation, or electromagnetic interference (EMI). Regulatory agencies such as the FCC in North America create standards that define the allowable limits of EMI over specific frequency ranges. Testing electronics PCBs and products for radiation and susceptibility compliance by formal test houses can be difficult and expensive. In-house tools and proper techniques that can help designs pass compliance testing quickly and minimize the cost of regulatory test procedures. The benefits of pre-compliance EMC testing include: detecting problems early, fixing potential issues, reducing testing and design costs, and avoiding future warranty issues.

Electromagnetic compliance (EMC) often presents a stumbling block to product manufacturing. Whether the failure is due to radiated emissions, electrostatic discharge, or radiated immunity, these issues must be fixed before a product hits the market, without cycling repeatedly through design, fixing, and testing at the compliance test lab. With many years of troubleshooting electronic products for various EMC issues under his belt, EMC guru Ken Wyatt has compiled a wealth of suggestions for detecting issues due to conducted, radiated, magnetic or capacitive coupling. This book addresses how to attack these issues early in the design cycle and how to characterize and troubleshoot simple design issues right on the workbench. The information in this guide will help engineers to become more efficient in the design process. Future volumes in the series will include simple, effective techniques of using these tools to perform in-house emissions, immunity troubleshooting, and pre-compliance testing.

“Create Your Own EMC Troubleshooting Kit” (180 pages paperback) with forward by noted electronics editor Martin Rowe is available now at $19.95 from Saelig Company, Inc., www.saelig.com.