Many factors must be considered when looking at the EMC aspects of a design, and it is easy to overlook an important point. This generic checklist is provided for you to assess your design against as it proceeds. For particular classes of design, you will want to expand it with your own experience.

• Design for EMC from the beginning; know what performance you require

• Partition the system into critical and non-critical sections:

  • determine which circuits will be noisy or susceptible and which will not

  • lay them out in separate areas as far as possible

  • select internal and external interface locations to allow optimum common mode current control

• Select components and circuits with EMC in mind:

  • use slow and/or high-immunity logic; apply slew rate limiting to data transmission interfaces

  • use series R buffering on all high-speed clock and data lines

  • use good power decoupling techniques: small, low-inductance capacitors adjacent to the ICs they are decoupling

  • use series ferrite chips in the supplies to create power segments

  • reduce fan-out on clock circuits by liberal use of buffers

  • minimize analogue signal bandwidths

  • maximize dynamic range of analogue signal paths

  • check stability in wideband amplifiers

  • don t leave unused IC input pins floating: tie them to 0V or V _{C C}

  • include resistive, ferrite or capacitive filtering at all sensitive analogue inputs

  • incorporate a watchdog circuit on every microprocessor

  • avoid edge triggered digital inputs if possible, protect...