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In various technical areas, the requirements and the complexity of electrically conductive structures (cables, printed circuit board traces) and their insulating materials are increasing, which leads to higher demands on reliability. Therefore, better diagnosis and control functions are needed. Intelligent fusing strategies with electronic fuses, where the current flow can be switched by semiconductors, can play an important role. One approach is to monitor the insulation temperature in order to detect thermal overloads and switch-off a current branch before the insulation is damaged. As especially in cables, a direct temperature measurement is troublesome, most approaches are based on current measurements. From a measured current, the cable insulator temperature can be derived using an electrothermal model. Those models can be very complex, especially when the transient and axial heat flow in a cable should be considered. The computational efforts for the commonly used numerical solution methods are high. Analytical approaches potentially reduce these efforts significantly. In this contribution, a new analytical approach for the calculation of the transient axial temperature distribution along an insulated single wire cable considering the nonlinear temperature dependency of the cable parameters is presented. It enables a precise and fast calculation of cable temperatures.

In this contribution, similarities and differences between electrical and thermal effects on cables are investigated. In the electrical transmission line theory, a wide variety of methods is known to describe the voltage and current along cables. The potential for the adaption of some of those methods to thermal problems is discussed. Exemplarily, for an unshielded single cable, an analytical solution based on the Laplace transform and an approach based on cascaded equivalent circuits are compared with a numerical reference solution and measurement results.

Boost power factor corrections tend to be considerable sources of electromagnetic disturbances. To ensure the proper functionality of susceptible systems in the vicinity, the emissions must be reduced. Passive filters, as a conventional solution to reduce conducted emissions, usually suffer from their high volume, weight and costs. Active filters can help to mitigate this problem, but the known solutions are systematically limited by inherent time constants and signal propagation delays since they derive the cancellation signal directly from a measured quantity by a feedforward and/or feedback approach. To resolve this issue, each harmonic can be individually suppressed by an artificially synthesized sine wave that is synchronized to the disturbances. By adjusting the amplitudes and phases of the suppressing sine waves, bothersome time constants and delay times can be compensated. In this work, it is shown that the switching harmonics of a power factor correction can be interpreted as modulated sine waves. By modulating the suppressing sine waves simultaneously, a very high performance can be achieved for the active cancellation system. The hardware and the algorithm are described, optimum parameters for the algorithm are identified and an FPGA implementation is applied to a real PFC.

Often, electromagnetic interference (EMI) scanning applications require phase and magnitude information for the creation of equivalent radiation models and far-field predictions. Magnitude information can be obtained using a spectrum analyzer (SA), which is relatively inexpensive compared to phase resolving instruments such as vector network analyzers (VNAs) and oscilloscopes at tens of GHz. This paper introduces and optimizes a cost-effective SA-based phase measurement method and compares the results to a VNA and oscilloscope-based methods for EMI signal sources. The measured-phase distribution obtained from the three different instruments is additionally compared with the simulated phase determined from full-wave simulation. The three measurement methods are compared based on the type of signal spectrum to be measured, such as single or multiple frequencies, signals requiring low-resolution bandwidth measurements, or transient signal events. The SA-based phase measurement technique is designed to operate from 5 to 12 GHz. However, the system frequency bandwidth is limited only by the frequency bandwidth of the individual RF components used in the SA measurement system.

Active cancellation of disturbances of power electronic systems is an aspiring method in EMC to reduce passive filter sizes. Most publications on this topic deal with the cancellation of either common- or differential-mode disturbances at either the input or the output terminals. In most practical systems, all disturbance modes of all terminals must be suppressed simultaneously. This is no trivial task since the different injectors for the cancellation signals can affect each other. Therefore, a cancellation signal for the input terminals can worsen the disturbances at the output terminals, or vice versa. Additionally, due to mode conversion, common- and differential-mode EMI can also interfere. In this work, synthesized cancellation signals are utilized that have already shown a promising performance in the suppression of periodic disturbances since complex transfer functions and delay times can easily be compensated. Here, a multi-port canceller is applied that injects synthesized cancellation signals to reduce the disturbances at multiple terminals simultaneously. The fundamental problem of mutually coupled injectors is discussed and a mathematical description is formulated. From this description, the cancellation signals are calculated and requirements for the system are derived. This method is applied to a GaN-based 48 V/12 V DC-to-DC converter with a switching frequency of 1 MHz in a measurement setup for conducted emissions according to the automotive EMC standard CISPR 25. The coupling and decoupling are practically discussed. The effectivity of the method is shown by measurements at artificial networks. The total power of the generated cancellation signals is estimated.

Active EMI cancellation is an interesting solution to reduce the size of passive filter components. In this work, the already established active EMI filter types are summarized. The systematic limitations are elaborated that result from the feedback or feedforward approach for cancellation signal generation. Afterward, a new method is presented in which the cancellation signal is artificially synthesized and injected into the system. This method is especially well suited for the suppression of periodic EMI since the anti-EMI can conveniently be synthesized from cancelling sine waves. Bothersome effects, like complex frequency characteristics or delays, can be compensated by appropriate amplitudes and phases. By doing so, systematic limitations of active EMI filters can be resolved. In this work, the fundamental concept and possible variants are depicted. Although many limitations of active EMI filters are resolved, also the new method has its limits. These are described and discussed. Furthermore, different methods for determining the cancelling sine waves are summarized. Last, a prototype cancellation system is presented and discussed to suppress the EMI of a GaN-based 48 V/12 V DC-to-DC converter with a switching frequency of 300 kHz. The disturbances are actively suppressed below the strictest limit (class 5) of the automotive standard CISPR 25 in the frequency range from 150 kHz to 30 MHz. The active suppression of the cancellation system and the passive attenuation of the coupling circuits are individually investigated to elaborate the performance of the active cancellation strategy. The power of the generated cancellation signal is estimated.

The high-frequency switching of power transistors in electronic systems can be a significant source of electromagnetic emissions (EMI). Simple measures like reducing the high-frequency disturbances by introducing an additional gate resistor lead to an increase of the switching losses. This creates a conflict of interests between the reduction of disturbances and high system efficiency. More complex active gate drivers offers improved compromises between EMI and efficiency. Avoiding steep switching slopes, overshoots or sharp edges are typical measures. The whole spectrum is modified this way and efficiency is still affected. In many cases, only a narrow banded modification of the spectrum might be needed to avoid the excitation of critical system resonances. This can be reached by a target signal-oriented control of the gate of the transistors. In the target signal the critical RF components should be reduced. Maximum control of the target signal is possible with fully synthesized gate signals. The reduction of some harmonics in the switching spectrum may lead to overshoots in time domain due to the Gibbs phenomenon. These overshoots may violate the physical limits of a transistor and cannot be realized. In this work, a method is presented to determine the target signal considering all physical limits. The found approach is applied in simulation to the signal of the drain-source voltage of a boost converter to reduce the harmonics in the FM broadcasting range. The gate control signal is determined for this application.

Communication systems with high data rates like CAN FD and Automotive Ethernet are increasingly used in automobiles. New safety-critical driving assistance functions can be realized with the help of these bus systems, but data transmission has to be very reliable. Road vehicles are a challenging electromagnetic environment because of the high density of electric and electronic devices. Power electronic systems can be very close to communication systems. The typical cable type for automotive communication systems is the unshielded twisted wire pair. Common mode disturbances cannot be reduced by this cable type. Due to unavoidable asymmetry in the communication system electromagnetic coupling can also induce critical differential mode voltages. For this reason, the immunity of communication systems to electromagnetic interferences has to be investigated in detail. In this paper, simulation models are presented and validated by measurements to quantify cable coupling to CAN FD and 100BASE-T1 Automotive Ethernet. Both, common and differential mode voltages caused by cable coupling are investigated. Based on measurements and simulations critical influencing parameters on mode conversion are discussed.

In many modern power electronic systems, fast-switching semiconductor devices are used to reduce switching losses. Due to steep switching waveforms and high switching frequencies, significant electromagnetic disturbances can be emitted. In contrast to conventional passive filter components, active cancellation methods are based on the controlled destructive interference between a noise signal and a corresponding anti-noise signal. Adaptive notch filters revealed themselves as a promising active EMI cancellation concept for periodic noise signals. In this work, adaptive notch filters are regarded in context of slowly time-varying periodic noise signals, e.g. pulse-width modulated signals as common in inverters. The corresponding noise signals consist of switching harmonics and adjacent sideband harmonics. Therefore, the notch filter’s bandwidth comes into focus and an analytical approximation for the ideal adaptive notch filter’s bandwidth is discussed. With help of this approximation, the adaptive notch filter can be parametrized specifically to a given noise spectrum and other requirements. The capability of the parametrization strategy and the adaptive notch filter itself are shown by simulation and measurement.

The evaluation of near-field data can be an effective way to analyze EMI sources. In contrast to antenna measurements, near-field techniques can determine the emitted field without special requirements on the measurement environment. Moreover, critical sources can be found when current distributions can be identified. Therefore, current reconstruction methods for PCB traces were developed. With additional voltage information the termination impedances of the traces can be found. The known phase-less approaches suffers from different limitations, e.g., non-unique reconstruction results. In this paper, the necessary conditions for a unique reconstruction are discussed by investigating simulated phase-less near-field data. Based on these findings, measured near-field data of a PCB trace is evaluated, and the successful retrieval of the phase information is shown. Additionally, reconstructed voltage distributions are presented and compared to measurement data.

Active cancellation of disturbing signals is a common method in electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of power electronic systems. In this paper, a new method of suppressing periodic disturbances is extended and applied. In this method, the disturbing harmonics are suppressed by a synthesized cancellation signal that is synchronized with the converter's operation. Here, the cancellation signal is synthesized from a number of destructive sine waves. The appropriate amplitudes and phases are found via a convenient and robust adaptive approach. As a special feature of this method, many troublesome effects, like delays or complex frequency characteristics, can be compensated easily. Therefore, this method does not suffer from the same limitations as previous active techniques. Until now, the method has only been proven for a small number of harmonics. In this study, it is applied to a wide frequency range of 150 kHz to 30 MHz of a 48-/12-V dc/dc converter, e.g., for automotive applications. An optimization strategy is developed from a causal model of the system. A test setup is realized, and the sensor's and injector's performances are discussed regarding the automotive EMC standard CISPR 25. Measurement results for the artificial network and the antenna are presented. The additional power losses are estimated.

Active cancellation of disturbing signals is a common method in EMC. In this paper, a specialized strategy is presented to minimize the disturbing harmonics of stationary clocked systems by injecting an appropriate harmonic cancellation signal with an adjustable signal synthesizer. The optimum cancellation signal is found via a convenient and robust adaptive approach. Each destructive harmonic is generated individually, and the cancelation signal is the superposition of a set of sinusoidal signals. As a special feature of this method, many troublesome effects, like delays or complex frequency characteristics, can be compensated easily. Several implementation variants can be derived from this general approach. Here, the variant, continuously adapted harmonics cancellation (CAHC), is considered. The system's limitations due to the ADC, the DAC, and the synchronization are described. An FPGA-implementation of CAHC is presented and applied to a dc/dc converter in an automotive component measurement setup to demonstrate the effectivity of the method.

Localization of EMI sources can be a challenging task. The next step is often to identify the parameters of the EMI generating structure and find appropriate suppression. In this work, a method is presented to handle such problems by using only a phase-less scan of the electromagnetic near-field. Here, radiating conductor systems are investigated, like traces on a PCB. Using the electric and/or magnetic near-field distribution, the radiating current distribution can be reconstructed. In this paper an approach based on a known trace geometry and electric as well as magnetic field data is presented. When current distribution is known, critical EMI sources can be found. Furthermore, an approach is presented to design virtually a filter concept for a critical EMI source. For demonstration, based on measurement data, an exemplary conductor structure is investigated. It is pointed out that high currents and high local fields do not necessarily lead to a high far-field. For the exemplary conductor structure, critical sources are identified, and it is shown how the needed filter structures can be found.

Immunity failures of safety-critical automotive sensors can often be linked to strong resonances. In traditional approaches to combat the resonance, it is either shifted to other frequencies or attenuated. In this paper, a third way is shown. Every resonance is associated with an eigenmode of the system. If externally excited, the mode may resonate with a certain amplitude. This amplitude is a function of the projection of the system’s excitation onto the spatial distribution of the mode.With the help of a 3D sensitivity analysis, we identify potential geometric parameters that lead either to a reduced excitation of the eigenmode or that lower the impact of the eigenmodes on the target signal.Applying this method to an automotive pressure sensor a significant reduction of the resonance amplitude by a small modification in the sensor layout is achieved.

The automotive wiring harness poses a challenging electromagnetic environment with its extension and small distances between wires. The introduction of high voltage applications and Wide-Band-Gap (WBG) semiconductors in power electronic systems leads to steeper slopes of control signals, e.g. PWM signals. These signals can cause serious coupling to communication wires and reduce the bitrate. As the safety and reliability of communication are essential requirements of new technologies like autonomous driving, immunity of communication systems has to be investigated. This paper shows a theoretical analysis on the impact of recurring disturbances on communication performance caused by wire coupling. To reduce the impact of disturbance, cooperative operating strategies of the power electronic system and the communication system are proposed to avoid serious delays or bitrate reductions. The presented cooperative operating strategy is an adapted access method based on available time-triggered concepts.

In this paper, model-based approaches to control smart power-switches in vehicles are presented and discussed. The proposed methods use thermal cable models as well as the load characteristics to provide not only a cable protection with different switching strategies but also diagnosis functions such as virtual monitoring of thermal aging and dynamic load limits. Those can be implemented on microcontrollers in different levels of complexity depending on the needed accuracy and calculation speed.

This paper deals with the application of spread spectrum techniques on power electronic converters to reduce electromagnetic disturbances. These techniques aim for a spreading of the harmonics in a frequency domain in order to distribute the power over a wider frequency range. By doing so, the levels of the harmonics drop. In this paper, both peak and average detector measurements are considered. It is shown that different parameters are required to minimize either peak or average emissions. The reduction of peak and/or average emissions is mathematically described for a sine wave as a harmonic of pulse width modulation signals. These spread harmonics overlap for high orders and/or high-frequency variations. It is shown that this effect is a limiting factor for spread spectrum in practical applications. The resulting maximum achievable reduction is analyzed. From these results, parametrization strategies are derived to fulfill specific requirements. In test setups, the precision of the proposed parametrization strategies is demonstrated. Additionally, it is shown that the results for peak measurements can also be applied to quasi-peak measurements.

Active cancellation can suppress electromagnetic interference (EMI) of clocked systems like power electronic converters. Considering clocked systems that operate stationary over a sufficient time, there are stable harmonics that can be individually suppressed by destructive sine waves. These sine waves can be superposed to create a synthesized wide bandwidth cancellation signal. Adaptive approaches have proven to be very effective to find the right parameters for each sine wave. Bothersome effects, like complex frequency characteristics or delays, can be compensated by appropriate amplitudes and phases. Therefore, this method does not suffer from the same limitations as active techniques with feedback- or feedforward-topologies. If the disturbances are constant over a sufficient time, the parameters for the cancelling sine waves can be found simultaneously or successively. Until now, only the first option has been shown with an adaptive cancelling FPGA system. Since the cancelling logic needed to be implemented for each cancelling sine wave and the resources of any FPGA are limited, the number of suppressible harmonics was limited as well. In this work, this limitation is resolved by a successive approach that enables the application of the method to a very large number of harmonics. The fundamental theory is discussed, and a robust algorithm is presented. A cancellation system is realized and applied to a 48V/12V DC/DC converter (e.g. for automotive applications) to suppress the frequency range of 150 kHz to 30 MHz in regard to the automotive EMC standard CISPR 25.

Automotive sensors need to fulfill severe electro-magnetic compatibility (EMC) requirements. The space available for EMC solutions based on discrete filter elements is limited. Furthermore, direct voltage or current measurements for analysis purposes are difficult. Innovative simulation methods are therefore needed to further understand and develop non-conventional EMC solutions. In this paper an analysis method to extract the dominant coupling path within sensors and to generate minimized electrical equivalent circuits (EEC) using network based sensitivity analysis is presented. In addition, a computational method that indicates the hotspots causing the EMC immunity failures with high resolution is introduced. Consequently, potential geometric and layout optimizations are derived easily. Failures due to small asymmetries are finally analyzed and optimized using an automotive pressure sensor.

In many modern power electronic systems, fast periodically switching semiconductors are utilized for system control and minimizing switching losses. The resulting steep switching waveforms may cause electromagnetic interference (EMI) that is mostly reduced with help of heavy passive filter circuits. One basic idea is to optimize EMC behavior and efficiency of power electronic devices by forming the switching waveforms with regard to steepness, overshoots, ringing and high frequency disturbances. Therefore, optimum control signals have to be found and synthesized. To do so, the nonlinear transmission behavior of semiconductor devices has to be considered. To start with, a basic MOSFET test circuit is regarded in this work. With help of an iterative search algorithm, a control signal is found that fits the MOSFET’s output signal to a desired waveform that optimizes EMI and minimizes switching losses. The capability of this method is shown by simulations and measurements.

Active cancellation of disturbances of power electronic systems is a common method in EMC. Most publications on this topic deal with the cancellation of either common or differential mode disturbances at either the input or the output terminals. In many systems, all disturbance modes of all terminals must be suppressed simultaneously. This is no trivial task since the different injectors for the anti-noise can affect each other. Therefore, a cancellation signal for the input terminals can worsen the noise at the output terminals, or vice versa. Additionally, due to mode conversion, common and differential mode can also interfere. In this work, synthesized cancellation signals are utilized that have already shown a very good performance in the suppression of periodic disturbances since complex transfer functions and delay times can be compensated. For the first time, a multi-port canceller is applied that injects synthesized cancellation signals to reduce the noise at four terminals simultaneously. The canceller enables a characterization of the system and an identification of the mutual coupling between the injectors. From this knowledge, the cancellation circuits can be designed purposefully. Furthermore, the mutual coupling can be respected in the calculation of the cancellation signals. A fundamental theory is described for DC/DC converters and applied to a 48 V/12 V converter in a measurement setup for conducted emissions according to the automotive EMC standard CISPR 25. The effectivity of the method is shown by measurements at artificial networks. The power losses of the cancellation system are estimated.

Automotive sensors need to fulfill severe electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) requirements. To improve the robustness of a sensor in early product development stages, an accurate immunity simulation is essential. Furthermore, a fast and reliable broadband immunity measurement to cover all sensor susceptibilities is necessary.In this paper, a new approach to simulate the digital output values of a pressure sensor in a closed-loop Bulk Current Injection (BCI) procedure is introduced. In addition, a sensor specific measurement method of both high accuracy and short test time is presented. Finally, the simulations are validated with measurements using automotive pressure sensors.

Active gate control of MOSFETs is a common strategy to improve efficiency and/or electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of power electronic systems. Finding an appropriate control method for specific requirements is no trivial task, and often there is a trade-off between efficiency and EMC. In this paper, a novel method is proposed that utilizes synthesized control signals. With signal synthesis methods, that can be realized affordable in future integrated circuits, signal shapes can be adjusted more or less arbitrarily. Various requirements, e.g. switching waveforms, overall system’s EMC or efficiency, can be aimed at this way. Here, a basic MOSFET circuit is investigated which should generate a specific switching waveform. This waveform shall improve the system’s EMC without significantly affecting the efficiency. The system is developed, characterized and a mathematical approximation is derived that respects the important temperature dependency. In this first demonstration, very low switching frequencies are considered that make the reactive elements of the MOSFET negligible. From the requirements and the system model, a suitable control signal can be derived. Measurement and simulation results show the good performance of the proposed method.

Electromagnetic disturbances from power electronic systems can affect communication networks, especially in the automotive wiring harness with its limited distance between wires. The introduction of Wide-Band-Gap (WBG) semiconductors in power electronic systems enables smaller components and higher efficiency due to higher frequencies and steeper slopes of the PWM control signals. Furthermore, the increasing energy demands lead to a raise of the voltage level up to 48 V. In contrast to high voltage automotive systems with complex shielded cables for EV (Electric Vehicles), unshielded cables are applied in 48 V cabling systems. The use of fast switching power electronic devices in combination with the increased voltage level pose a new challenge on electromagnetic compatibility in automotive environment. This paper shows investigations on the immunity of communication networks under these new conditions. Therefore, measurement and simulative analysis are presented to estimate the potential impact on the reliability of data transmission.

Information on field emissions is required in many applications. Typically, antennas are used for the measurement of the far-field. Antenna measurements suffer from several problems, e.g. the need of large anechoic chambers. Near-field measurements/scans might become an attractive alternative in the future. The far-field can finally be calculated from near-field measurement data. For an accurate calculation, phase and amplitude distributions of the near-fields are needed for all considered frequencies. As phase measurement can be very troublesome, the reconstruction of the phase from phase-less measurement data is highly attractive. In this paper, a method is presented to find the EMI of PCB traces or similar structures with phase-less near-field measurements. In this method, knowledge of the geometry of potential radiating is applied. From this knowledge, boundary conditions can be found for phase estimation. The method is shown in detail and the benefits are discussed on result of reconstructed current distributions and estimations of the far-field.

Continuously increasing requirements for on-board system performances lead to new topologies for the energy distribution in vehicles. One promising concept is the usage of a dual-battery system instead of the conventional lead-acid “starting lightening ignition” battery. As this system is not able to control the current share between the two batteries, its performance depends on the actual battery specific operating points.The initial conditions of state of charge, voltage level and temperature influence the current share and lead to a different voltage drop of the system. This paper yields to, the basic understanding of the current share between the two batteries. The conventional performance estimation method for standalone lead-acid batteries can no longer be applied to this system. Therefore, a new algorithm for the voltage drop calculation of the dual-battery system is proposed. Measurements at different temperatures, states of charge and voltage levels show the system behavior and prove the functionality of the algorithm.

Several immunity test procedures for narrowband radiated electromagnetic energy are available for automotive components. The ISO 11452 series describes the most commonly used test methods. The absorber line shielded enclosure (ALSE) is often considered as the most reliable method. However, testing with the bulk current injection (BCI) can be done with less efforts and is often preferred. As the test setup in both procedures is quite similar, there were several trials for finding appropriate modifications to the BCI in order to increase the matching to the ALSE. However, the lack of knowledge regarding the impedance of the tested component, makes it impossible to find the equivalent current to be injected by the BCI and a good match cannot be achieved. In this paper, three approaches are proposed to estimate the termination impedance indirectly by using different current probes.

Radiated electromagnetic fields from a PCB can be estimated when the source current distribution is known. From a measured near-field distribution, the PCB source current distribution can be found. Accuracy depends on the measurement method and its limitations, the radiation model and the choice of the observation area. Many known methods are based on optimization algorithms for inverse problems that vary a set of elementary radiation sources and create a radiation model. However, apart from the time-consuming optimization process, such methods find one possible solution for a near-field distribution. As this distribution might not reflect the real current distribution, accuracy outside of near-field scan area can be low. Furthermore numerical problems can often be observed. Solving the given inverse problem with a system of linear equations and complex near-field data it can be very sensitive to noise. Regularization methods and an adjusted preconditioning can increase the accuracy. In this paper, an improved radiation model creation approach based on complex near-field data is presented. This approach is based on regularization methods and extended by current estimations from near-field data. Preconditioning is done considering some physical properties of the PCB and its possible current paths. Accuracy and stability of the method are investigated in the presence of noisy data.

Automotive electric components are required to pass radiated emission tests. According to CISPR-25 standard (ALSE method), an expensive anechoic chamber is needed for conducting the field emission testing. Reproducibility due to high sensitivity to chamber and setup details is poor. Alternative methods, which perform measurements without using a chamber are preferred. This paper provides an alternative pre-compliance method for predicting the fields of CISPR-25 results for frequencies below 30 MHz, based mainly on electric near-field measurements. The motivation is that common-mode current measurements or magnetic near-field measurement based methods give good field prediction above 30 MHz, but fail below 30 MHz. The proposed method applies Huygens' Principle for field prediction. The electric field distribution for the defined Huygens' surface and the equivalent currents are estimated from a small number of field measurements close to the ground plane. It is shown that the electric field can be well predicted, compared with a full-wave simulation the deviation is within 4 dB, compared with a standard antenna measurement up to 3 MHz the deviation is less than 1 dB.

Power line communication (PLC) could not be established in automotive environments till now due to concerns with the unavoidable electromagnetic disturbances in the vehicle supply nets. Conducted broad band switching noise and field coupled narrow band noise can disturb the communication and prevent higher data rates. The continuously increasing size of the communication cable harnesses in vehicles is very difficult to handle, and PLC could reduce the complexity of the harness. This paper presents an approach to estimate the theoretical limits of PLC in the presence of noise in automobiles. Signal power and bit error rates are computed and discussed, based on electromagnetic compatibility-standards and PLC-parameter sets from older investigations’ noise levels. Commonly used automotive immunity tests are applied to analyze the signal to noise ratio of the PLC in a simulation environment. Therefore, immunity test setup models are introduced in order to analyze the noise injection and coupling characteristics to the PLC receiver. A virtual direct power injection (DPI) test is carried out with narrow band noise and transient pulse injection. For method validation, BCI measurements of a real PLC transceiver were carried out and failure behavior was compared to DPI simulation results. Immunity improvement for single carrier modulation in PLC is proposed. Finally, an analysis of the immunity to pulses is performed and results are discussed.

According to automotive standard CISPR 25, electronic components or modules are required to be connected to a specific test cable bundle in order to evaluate the radiated emissions. In the absorber-lined shielded enclosure (ALSE) method, also called the antenna method, the cable bundle is often the dominant radiation structure due to its length. This measurement method requires a large anechoic chamber, but often, it is only the impact of the test cable bundle's common-mode (CM) current distribution that is measured. Since the current distribution can be measured easily with current clamps, and with much lower demands to the environment, it is advantageous that the level of radiated fields can be estimated from the measured current distribution. This paper presents a field prediction method, which combines a measured CM current distribution with numerical computations for the radiated fields in the frequency range of 30–1000 MHz. Applicability is discussed based on several complex test cases. Three major problems had to be solved. First, appropriate current phase measurement methods had to be developed since the current amplitudes are not sufficient for estimating the electric fields. Second, a CM radiation model of a cable bundle had to be found. Third, in order to get comparable data for the ALSE test environment, a method had to be developed that could take this influence into account. Different solution approaches are examined here for the problems mentioned above.

The commonly used Transfer Impedance, ZT, measurement methods for shielded cables and connectors for high voltage applications in Electric and Hybrid Electric Vehicles might be difficult to handle and reproducibility might be low. Alternative methods to measure ZT are required. In this article, the methods, Ground Plate Method and Capacitive Voltage Probe Method are introduced. The methods do not require special setups and can handle even large cable-connector systems. Performance has been investigated by comparisons to ZT measurements using well established methods, i.e. Triaxial- and Line-Injection-Method. Performance and limitations of the proposed methods for both cable and cable-connector systems are discussed. Measurement results were compared to analytical formulas for ZT. It could have been shown that accuracy of proposed, easier to apply and more flexible alternative methods is in the same range as Triaxial- and Line-Injection-Method. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2016.

In this paper, approaches for the modeling and simulation of thermal destruction of ICs due to ESD are discussed from a system point of view. Considered systems consist of ESD generator, PCB, protection element, and IC. A direct connection between the ESD generator and the system is always assumed. For the modeling of an IC ESD destruction, the electric behavior model of an IC pin to ground or supply is extended with a thermal destruction model. The thermal model consists mainly of a thermal resistance and a thermal capacitance. When structure temperature reaches a threshold, a failure is assumed. All needed model parameters can be found with a set of measurements and tests. No internal knowledge of the IC or protection element structures is required. The methodology was applied to several ICs, protection elements, and system structures with emphasis on automotive electronics. All needed component model parameters were generated from measurements. Models and parameter measurements are described. Results from the system simulation were compared to system test results with hardware. In most cases, the simulation could predict well the destruction behavior of a system. Thermal failure and safe operating area prediction quality are compared. The described simulation method helps with selection of protection strategies and optimization of system ESD robustness.