EMC symposium 2012 - part 1 (new products)
Kenneth Wyatt- August 14, 2012
Held in Pittsburgh this year, the IEEE International Symposium on EMC was as exciting and eventful as ever. Attendance seemed lower tan last year, but there was still that "energy" surrounding all the EMC symposia that excited the soul. Several new products were announced and I'm sure I'll end up missing a few, so please chime in under the comments section if I missed any.
Dutch Microwave Absorber Solutions (DMAS) has introduced a high performance and environmentally friendly polystyrene microwave absorber that will cover the frequency range 30 MHz to 40 GHz. The first 10m installation went to Delta Denmark in Aartus. Combined with ferrite tile 18" is all you need for good performance. Older chambers may also be retrofitted. One nice feature is the lack of fire retardant chemicals and it's fully compliant with today's environmental standards.
Teseq, Inc., has updated their fully CISPR 16 compliant EMI receiver, added new USB interfaces on all their RF amplifiers for ease of use, added a new three-phase burst pulse CDN for EFT testing and introduced a new magnetic field coil which can generate up to 1,200 A/m.
I stopped at the Würth Electronics booth to check out their new line of magnetics for the newer LED lighting applications. They've also developed a special half-round common-mode choke for use in SMPS filters in the LED lighting which replaces the long fluorescent tubes.
EM Software and Systems, Inc., was there demoing their electromagnetics simulation software called FEKO. It's useful for modeling antennas, radar cross-section, RFID, SAR, EMC, etc. FEKO is based on the Method of Moments (MoM) and can pull in several other analytical methods, such as Finite Element Method (FEM) to improve computational efficiency. They'll be releasing the latest version very soon.
Gauss Instruments was demoing their new wide-bandwidth (up to 162.5 MHz at a time) time domain EMI analyzer, the TDEMI 40G, which measures from 10 Hz to 40 GHz. They had an analyzer connected to a current probe measuring the emissions from a switched (on and off) light bulb powered from a standard SMPS. It was impressive to see the immediate broadband display of noise.
Archie Fraser, from Techcelerant (an Agilent Technologies partner), was back again this year after missing the symposium in Long Beach. His company has developed a new easy-setup automated EMC pre-compliance or compliance software package that includes the usual EU tests. There is also a dynamic report generator available. Bundled pricing ranges from $9,500 to $12,000.
Dudley Kay, from SCITECH Publishing, Inc., was there with a number of technical books for sale. He was also actively looking for EMC-related authors.
ETS-Lindgren introduced several new antennas and Rhode & Schwarz has added a line of chambers.
Retlif Testing Laboratories had an interesting display of classic EMI measuring receivers from the 50s through 70s, including a Singer NF-105A, several old Stoddart receivers and an AN/PRM-1B radio test set.
Newark Electronics was promoting their new "Element14" web site that offers information, products, tools, solutions and support for your entire design process. Included are tools and information on research, development, fabrication and assembly. This set of tools would be perfect for smaller companies and even hobbyists that need to produce short-run PC boards or products. The tools include the Eagle schematic, layout and autorouting software, embedded processor development and many other useful tools and information to get your product designed and manufactured.
There were many other vendors, of course, but not all highlighting new products this year. I'd also like to reiterate, the featured products listed were only the ones that caught my eye…there were plenty others and my hope is that if your new product was missed, please provide some details in the comments section below.
My next posting will include a report of some of the other conference highlights, activities and technical sessions.