History abounds at EMC Symposium
IEEE EMC Symposium, Hawai’i Convention Center, Honolulu, HI. www.emc2007.org.
Martin Rowe, Senior Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 7/12/2007 5:29:00 PM
Honolulu, HI—As part of the IEEE EMC Society’s 50th anniversary, the second day of the 2007 IEEE EMC Symposium featured a special technical session on EMC history. Hugh Denny, principal research engineer emeritus at the Georgia Tech Research Center, explained in "Fifty Years of EMC Research at Georgia Tech" that EMC research began because of interference to military radios. Engineers looked to reduce emissions from other equipment so radios would work. He also discussed how radars and microwave ovens interfered with early pacemakers designed in the 1970s.
| More from the EMC Symposium at: Technical sessions abound, EMC Symposium exits Hawaii, and Martin Rowe's blog. |
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EMC Consultant Dan Hoolihan. |
In the afternoon, David Pommerenke of the Intel engineer Xiaopeng Dong discussed differences in radiated emissions between microstrip and stripline IC packages. At 2 GHz, the stripline package emitted 20 dB more emissions. "We didn’t expect the stripline to be noisier than the microstrip package," he told the audience. Models confirmed that the stripline package did indeed generate higher emissions at 2 GHz.University of Missouri-Rolla followed with a discussion of how 8-bit microcontrollers respond to ESD. These controllers are used in low-cost applications and their voltage regulators often consist of just a Zener diode and a capacitor. Thus, ESD has an easy path to the controller. Pommerenke used circuit models to explain how current from an ESD event can travel through a microcontroller and cause errors.
On the exhibit floor
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EMC consultant Ken Javor. |
The exhibit floor featured several ongoing presentations in addition to a product exhibition. Jeff Evans of Hewlett-Packard demonstrated several probes (pictured below) designed to measure resistance in galvanized metal plates used as equipment enclosures. "The probes need calibrated weights to maintain repeatable results," he said. That’s because the measurement result varies with applied pressure.
Agilent Technologies demonstrated several recently released products, including the E4440A PSA series of spectrum analyzers and N9039A preselector. The company also demonstrated a 33220A function generator and DSO 5000 series oscilloscopes.
California Instruments exhibited the Compact i/iX combination AC/DC power source and spectrum analyzer. Kikusui demonstrated its KHA1000 harmonic and flicker analyzer.
Teseq (formerly Schaffner EMC) introduced several new products. The NSG 437 is a lower-cost version of the company's ESD simulator. It produces 30 kV pulses of several shapes. Also new is a conducted immunity tester, model NSG 4070, which combines a signal generator, amplifier, and control software.
