Last updated: September 24, 2008

Consulting activities focus on design verification and problems at the system, circuit, and device level as well as EMC and immunity (including ESD) problems. By applying specialized knowledge and measurement technology that Doug Smith has developed over the years, often, he solves design or field problems in hours or a few days which had not yielded results from weeks, months, or even years of effort using conventional engineering methods of investigation.

Systems and designs Doug performs include:

• Semiconductor processing equipment
• Semiconductor device design and verification
• Lightwave transmission equipment
• Wireless equipment including:
  • Cellular phones and base station equipment
  • Cordless phones
• Information Technology Equipment
• Telephone switching systems
• Shielded and Unshielded data transmission systems
• Medical equipment
• Air traffic control equipment
• Industrial control equipment
• Network file servers

Doug will apply high frequency measurement techniques on-site to problems both to find the problem and to give the client the tools needed to understand and avoid problems in the future. Problems he has solved include: signal integrity, electromagnetic emissions, immunity to ESD and electrical fast transients, and immunity to sources of noise for which there are no current standards. If your system is experiencing unexplained glitches, data loss, or malfunctions, Doug Smith can be an invaluable resource to your organization. Providing design techniques and verification measurement methods for proactive avoidance of noise, immunity, or EMC problems are also part of Doug’s services for clients.

Education:
B. E. E. E. (Electrical Engineering) 1969 Vanderbilt University
M. S. E. E. (Electrical Engineering) 1970 California Institute of Technology

Honors:
1959 Amateur Radio Operator - K4OAP (General class at age 12)
1962 FCC Second Class Commercial Radiotelephone License
1963 FCC First Class Commercial Radiotelephone License
1969 Eta Kappa Nu, Engineering Honor Society
1969 Tau Beta Pi, Engineering Honor Society
1983 Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, AT&T Bell Labs
1989 AT&T Bell Labs, Inventor's Hall of Fame
1990 Senior Member of IEEE
1998 IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Board of Directors
Hobbies and Activities:
Amateur Radio Operator, K4OAP
Bicyclist
Runner
SCUBA Diver
Employment History:
April 2000-present:
Specializing in high frequency measurements, circuit/system design and verification, switching power supply noise and specifications, EMC, and immunity to transient noise; laboratory demonstration based courses on device, circuit, and system design, as well as high frequency measurement techniques.

1996-April 2000: Manager EMC Development and Test, Auspex Systems, a maker of high performance network servers in Santa Clara, CA
Responsible for insuring that Auspex products met international standards for EMC, both emissions and immunity, and safety. In addition, the group that I headed worked to insure the robustness of Auspex designs.

During time at Auspex, no product introduction was ever delayed by an EMC or safety agency issue. In some cases, Doug helped suppliers design their products, especially switching power supplies.

Standards committee participation at Auspex includes:

• ANSI C63 EMC
  • Subcommittee 1, EMC Measurements
  • Subcommittee 3, International
  • ESD subcommittee
• ESD Association Working Group 14, ESD Simulators
• T1E1.7, Telephone Central Office Protection
• IEC TC77B WG9 TC77B is concerned with high frequency immunity of electronic equipment. WG9 is rewriting the current standard IEC 1000-4-2 on electrostatic discharge testing.

1970-1996: Member/Distinguished Member of Technical Staff of AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel and Middletown, NJ
Doug’s work with Bell Labs encompassed linear circuit design, telephone transmission theory, digital design, digital and analog ASIC design, pulsed electromagnetic interference including electrostatic discharge (ESD), and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). More specifically, he designed the time division bus structure and many of the interfaces to the telephone network in the Definity Communications System (TM), a number of linear and digital integrated circuits, and analog transmission plans and circuitry for a number of other AT&T products.

Doug has been granted over fifteen patents.

Directed EMC and ESD studies over the years that resulted in novel, low cost solutions. Projects ranged from ESD interference affecting manufacturing robots to problems resulting from radiated interference generated by loose pocket change.

Designs included improvements to unshielded twisted pair, UTP, interfaces for local area network equipment. These designs have helped UTP achieve performance equivalent to shielded systems in many cases.

Participation in standards work for AT&T including (all current participation except as noted):

• TIA: TR41.9 committee on FCC Part 68 rules (previous participation)
• TIA: TR41.7 environmental committee (specifically, ESD requirements for terminal quipment)
• T1E1: Requirements for Telephone Central Office equipment and operator positions
• ESD 14.0: This body is currently generating a qualification test for ESD simulators to improve the repeatability of IEC 1000-4-2 (previously known as IEC 801-2) ESD testing of equipment. Participated in round-robin testing in New Jersey, California, Canada and England on existing simulators using high bandwidth measurement techniques. I am Secretary of this body.
• ANSI (C63): This body is currently converting the ANSI ESD testing guide to a full standard.
• IEC TC77B WG3: This working group of the IEC is concerned with high frequency immunity including ESD and electrical fast transient (EFT) interference. I recently proposed a measurement method for evaluating coupling clamp performance for the IEC 1000-4-4 EFT test and performed round-robin testing on existing clamp designs in New Jersey and California.

Taught and consulted for many organizations throughout AT&T essentially as an internal consultant. Doug’s High Frequency Measurement Techniques Seminar was one of the most popular in-hours education courses offered at Bell Labs.
Before 1970:

1969-Summer Member of Technical Staff
Bell Labs Holmdel, NJ

During the summer before my graduate work, Doug designed circuitry and performed testing for the MJ/MK Mobile Radiotelephone System. One of his circuits helped to insure that a mobile radio would lock onto its local idle tone instead of the tone from a nearby city.

1969-Fall/Sp Transmitter Engineer (AM)
Radio Station WMAK Nashville, TN

Doug’s responsibilities included the operation of station's remote transmitter site and some maintenance.
1968-Summer Electronic Technician
Bendix Avionics Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Working in the instrument pool, Doug was involved in the repair and calibration of test equipment. Doug’s specialty was repairing equipment that was considered beyond local capabilities to fix.
1967-Fall Transmitter Engineer (AM)
Radio Station WWGM Nashville, TN
Doug was responsible for operation of the remote transmitter.
1967-Summer Electronic Technician
Bendix Avionics Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Working in the instrument pool, Doug was involved in the repair and calibration of test equipment and the building of custom test sets.
1966-Summer Electronic Technician
Civil Defense HQ, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Doug’s responsibilities included maintaining radio communication gear, including building some custom equipment. Doug was also responsible for maintaining electronic equipment at fallout shelter locations around the county.
1965-Summer Electronic Technician
Civil Defense HQ, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Doug’s responsibilities included maintaining radio communication gear, including building some custom equipment. I was also responsible for maintaining electronic equipment at fallout shelter locations around the county.
1962-Summer Electronic Technician
Solar Research Inc. Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Doug designed and helped to set up production for a solid state galvanic response "lie detector".
1960-Summer Electronic technician trainee
MicroDyne Corp. Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Technical Development:

Published book:

High Frequency Measurements and Noise In Electronic Circuits, 1992, published by Van Nostrand Reinhold, ISBN #0-442-00636-5, 231 pages

Published papers:

• "Investigate System-Level ESD Problems," Test & Measurement World Magazine, November 1999, cover story.
• "Unusual Forms of ESD and Their Effects," 1999 EOS/ESD Symposium Proceedings, pp.329-333.
• "Signal and Noise Measurement Techniques Using Magnetic Field Probes," 1999 IEEE EMC Symposium Proceedings, pp. 559-563.
• "Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Damage to Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) Recording Heads", 1998 EOS/ESD Symposium (jointly authored with A. Wallash).
• "Metrology and Methodology of System Level ESD Testing", 1998 EOS/ESD Symposium (jointly authored with D. Lin, D. Pommerenke, J. Barth, L. G. Henry, H. Hyatt, M. Hopkins, and G. Senko).
• "Damage to Magnetic Recording Heads Due to Electromagnetic Interference", 1998 IEEE EMC Symposium (jointly authored with A. Wallash).
• "Current Probes, More Useful Than You Think", 1998 IEEE EMC Symposium.
• "A Method of Assessing Disk Drive EMI Performance for Large Arrays of Disks", 1998 IEEE EMC Symposium (jointly authored with G. Dutrow and G. Seebruch).
• "A Method for Troubleshooting Noise Internal to an IC", 1997 IEEE EMC Symposium.
• "Measurements of ESD HBM Events, Simulator Radiation and Other Characteristics Toward Creating a More Repeatable Simulation or; Simulators Should Simulate", 1996 EOS/ESD Symposium (jointly authored with J. Barth, D. Dale, K. Hall, D. McCarthy, H. Hyatt, and J. Nuebel).
• "An Investigation into the Performance of the IEC 1000-4-4 Capacitive Clamp", 1996 EOS/ESD Symposium.
• "A New Method for Measuring the Shielding Effectiveness of Interconnections in Shielding Technologies: Application to Cellular Phone Gaskets for the Housing", 1996 IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility (jointly authored with Richard Haynes and Philip J. Muniz).
• "Measure Noise in Switching Supplies", Test & Measurement World, April 1996, pp. 11-12.
• "Coaxial Magnetic Probes and Applications", ITEM 1996, pp. 128-129 (jointly authored with Richard Haynes).
• "Balanced Probe Extends High-Frequency Measurements", IEEE Circuits & Devices, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 1994, pp. 19-23.
• "EMC Performance Comparison of Shielded and Unshielded Data Transmission Systems", EMC '94 Roma, International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, University of Rome "La Sapienza".
• "CISPR Conducted Emissions Measurements on Telecommunications Leads: An Improved Test Proposal", 1994 IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility.
• "An Improved Method of Characterizing Shielding Materials", 1994 IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility (jointly authored with Chauncey Herring and Richard Haynes both of the AT&T Engineering Research Center at Princeton, NJ).
• "Troubleshooting Using a Differential Coax Probe", IEEE Santa Clara Valley EMC '94.
• "A New Type of Furniture ESD and Its Implications", 1993 EOS/ESD Symposium.
• "Techniques and Methodologies for Making System Level ESD Response Measurements for Troubleshooting or Design Verification", 1992 EOS/ESD Symposium.
• "A Comparison of the Susceptibility Performance of Shielded and Unshielded Twisted Pair Cable for Data Transmission", 1992 International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility (jointly authored with Bob Pritchard of AT&T Network Cable Systems).
• "Applying High Frequency Techniques to Measuring ESD Phenomena and its Effects", 1989 EOS/ESD Symposium.
• "Computer Simulation of ESD and Lightning Events", 1986 EOS/ESD Symposium.
• "Transmission Improvements on Local Loops by Using Active Terminations", 1978 International Symposium on Subscriber Loops and Services.

Seminars:

Over the last ten years, Doug has independently developed seminars on high frequency measurement techniques, EMC design an troubleshooting techniques, and system level ESD design. These seminars have been taught at many companies in the US and overseas. In 1997, Doug delivered a guest lecture at a Norwegian University on high frequency measurement techniques.

1987- present

Doug has conducted dozens of workshops, tutorials, and technical demonstrations at both the IEEE EMC Symposium and the EOS/ESD Symposium.

1987-1995 Electrical Overstress/Electrostatic Discharge (EOS/ESD) Symposium

During this period of time Doug served on the Steering Committee in many capacities including: General Chairman, Vice-General Chairman, Technical Program Chairman, Secretary, and Registration Chairman. In addition, Doug presented many tutorial programs on ESD immunity of electronic equipment, served as a technical session moderator many times and moderated many workshop discussion sessions.

1990-1 KeyTek Pulsed EMI Seminar
Doug lectured for KeyTek Instrument Corporation using their material on pulsed EMI. These were two day lectures covering the IEC 801 series of pulsed EMI standards as well as design techniques and were given in various locations in the US.

Early experience:
1968-69, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN: Chief Engineer for WRVU, the campus radio station.

1962-65, various locations in Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Several times in this period I taught radio theory and Morse code classes for people studying to become amateur radio operators.

Mobile Phone Induced EMI, August 2007

This month's Technical Tidbit discusses EMI induced by mobile phones into nearby electronic circuits. Significant voltages can be induced into circuit features of a small electronic product that is in contact with a mobile phone, such as in a pocket or purse.

Abstract: Cases of circuit failures caused by mobile, or cell, phones are starting to be reported. Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) from mobile phones has been shown to produce hard and soft failures in circuits. Data is presented to show the possible amplitude of EMI induced into a common printed wiring board layout feature. The induced signal is of sufficient amplitude to corrupt signals and in some cases cause hard failures.

Book: High Frequency Measurements and Noise in Electronic Circuits

ISBN 0-442-00636-5
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 92-4845
Published 1993, Kluwer Academic Publishers

This book is currently available from the publisher.

• For single book orders from the publisher, send email by clicking here to send an email to Alex Greene, a senior editor at the publisher.