Aug 19 2009 3:52PM | Permalink |Comments (0) |
On Tuesday, August 18, I attended a presentation at the EMC Symposium “A Flexible EMI Measurement Sheet to Measure Electric and Magnetic Fields Separately with Distributed Antennas and LSIs.” Presented by The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science graduate student N. Masunaga. He explained the problem of devices such as cell phones having intrasystem emissions problems. The phone’s RF transmitter can interfere with analog circuits.
Masunaga described a solution to the problem of locating an emission with a flexible EMI receiving “antenna” that wraps around the equipment under test. Typical scans are currently done with magnetic-field probes scanned over the EUT. The “sheet” consists of a matrix of 4x4 PCBs with a stretchable interconnect between them. Each PCB consists of four antennas, making for 64 antennas in total. The PCBs are mounted on a rubber sheet.
The presentation consisted of a video animation of the stretchable interconnect. The video showed an LED that stayed lighted even as the interconnect was stretched.
The measurement ICs on each PCB has and IC that consists of a four-stage differential amplifier that amplifies electric and magnetic field signals. A rectifier on the IC converts to unipolar and a sample-and-hold circuit clocked at 100 kHz, produces a DC voltage proportional to magnetic field strength.
Masunaga showed a video demo of the probe and how he and other use it to locate the sources of an emission. To calibrate the probe, Masunaga explained that the research team used an RF signal generator to produce a known signal power.
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