Advanced Troubleshooting Techniques for Circuits and Systems

This course covers advanced techniques for troubleshooting design problems both in the laboratory and in field installations. Doug Smith, the Course Tutor, has developed these techniques over more than 30 years working in this field.

Although very effective, most of the techniques are not published and are unknown to others, even experienced engineers.

Most of the procedures taught have solved major design problems in a few days or sooner that were unsolved by a team of engineers, in some cases over a period of months. Some of the techniques presented are very effective at reproducing problems that occur in the field infrequently, for instance in one customer in a thousand or only a few times per year, but that can have serious consequences.

There are techniques covered in the course that are applicable from tens of kHz to tens of GHz and these often succeed when standard techniques of circuit debugging have failed. A few of the many techniques covered in the course include:

• noise injection though mutual inductance to find layout defects on printed wiring boards that cause SI and EMC problems
• finding resonant frequencies of physical structures
• determining risk from mobile phones without an expensive setup
• easily determining if a package has suitable parasitics for the die inside as well as tracking down EMC problems caused by package parasitics

This course describes many different techniques in depth, how to apply them, and how to interpret results. A list of recommended equipment for troubleshooting difficult problems is presented. The techniques presented often use this equipment in unusual ways that are not obvious until seen.

Emphasis is placed on delivering practical knowledge that can be used immediately on the job. Some class time is reserved to discuss problems and interests of those attending. Each course delivery is modified to fit the interests of the attending students.

Benefits

• Learn techniques for tracking down difficult design or equipment problems in the lab or field.
• Learn to reproduce in the lab difficult field problems that happen intermittently.
• Develop an understanding for the kinds of design issues and noise sources that cause designs to fail.
• Learn how to locate and deal with the sources of noise that cause problems in designs.
• Learn about noise related reliability problems in system, board, and device design.
• Learn to apply troubleshooting techniques in a logical way to uncover design problems.
• Learn construction techniques for useful laboratory apparatus that can easily track down problems.
• Learn how to use test equipment you already have in novel ways to find design problems.

All those attending will also receive a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM will contain data including the course notes in pdf format, a variety of published technical articles, an image of the course presenters technical website and a tutorial plus a Technical Tidbit audio file from the presenter's subscription website.