8 tips to avoid ground loops when dealing with signal level circuits

Ground loops and signal noise

General recommendation is to properly design and implement the facility’s grounding system to avoid unwanted involvement of ground loops with the operation of the equipment. This kind of approach can also eliminate the need to consider equipment modifications and to engage in costly diagnostic efforts since most trouble involving common-mode noise is avoided in the signal circuits.

It is generally not possible in complex systems with interconnected data and signal conductors to avoid all ground loops.

Some eight tips that may be used to avoid the detrimental effects of such ground loops include:


Tip #1
Where possible, cluster the interconnected electronic equipment into an area that is served by a single signal reference grid (SRG). If the interconnected equipment is located in separate, but adjacent rooms, then a common signal reference grid should serve all the rooms.

Tip #2
Effectively bond each frame/enclosure of the interconnected equipment to the SRG. In this way, the SRG acts like a uniformly shared ground reference that maintains a usefully low impedance over a very broad range of frequency. Typically, from dc to several tens of MHz, for example.

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