Maybe a ground plane can be omitted in very certain cases, AFTER careful testing and finding out, that compliance can also be achieved without a ground plane. But to tell a beginner that he shall omit a solid ground plane at the early designing phase is the total wrong recommendation!

My $0.02 on the above.

By all means omit the ground plane and skip the 4 layers if you are going to make so many units that 25 iterations of the PCB is no problem If you are to make 100.000 units, you can fiddle with the PCB till a 1 or 2 layer PCB works barely satisfactory, but if you make less the time and money spent going through iteration after iteration is not justified. BTW my last 500.000 units produced project was a 4 layer board.

I am not flaming or anything like that, but I wonder if Prahad will save enough with his 2 layer board to justify the time he has already spent working on it.

I have no hesitation that I am using 4 layers for boards we produce 10.000 of annually. The risk of doing anything else is not worth it.

I am not flaming or anything like that, but this, to an extent, has turned into a "how do I avoid doing the right thing (4 layers)" discussion.

Erik