Dr. Giulio Antonini, Dr. Omar Ramahi, and Mark Steffka began their two-year terms as the newest Distinguished Lecturers (DL) of the IEEE EMC Society on 1 January 2010. They replace Dr. Eric Bogatin, Dr. Tzong-Lin Wu, Dr. Stephen Frei, and Dr. Alistair Duffy whose terms expired at the end of 2009 after many successful presentations to local chapters around the globe. Our other three DLs, Dr. Joungho Kim, Dr. Ji Chen, and Dr. Sergiu Radu continue their terms through December of 2010.

     Before introducing Giulio, Omar and Mark, I want to acknowledge the contributions of Eric, Tzong-Lin, Stephen and Alistair over the past two years. During their terms, they volunteered to spend many days away from home, family, familiar food, and familiar people. They traveled by airplane, by car, and busses in order to give presentations in the Unites States, Americas, Asia and Europe. Our Society’s local chapters meetings have benefited from the in-person contributions of these bright and learned volunteers. For those of you who have attended one of their presentations, I am sure you know what a very fun and education experience these folks provide. Please join me in thanking our retiring DLs, and welcoming our new expert speakers.

     If you haven’t seen a DL at your chapter meeting, you are really missing
one of the most popular benefits that our Society offers. I am certain that this year’s new speakers will continue the DL tradition of offering excellent technical education, advice, and entertainment. Chapter Chairs can request any of the Distinguished Lecturer’s to come to their local chapter meeting. Once the schedule details are agreed upon by both parties, the EMC Society pays for the travel costs, so the local chapter gets experts speakers, on a wide range of topics, at no cost to the local chapter!
     Below are our new Distinguished Lecturers for 2010–2011. Please feel free to contact them directly by phone or email to discuss hosting them at your next chapter meeting, university class, or other special event. You can find contact information under the Distinguished Lecturer section of the EMC Society web site (www.emcs.org).

Giulio Antonini is a Professor at the University of L’Aquila in Italy. He is well known as an expert in the Partial Element Equivalent Circuit simulation technique and PCB interconnect modeling and has many publications in the area of Signal Integrity for high speed circuits and EMC.
     Giulio’s topics will be:

1. Interconnect Time-domain Modeling
   The rapid increase in operating speed and density of modern integrated circuits has made a challenging problem of transmission line modeling. Its difficulty resides in the requirement to properly capture physical effects such as reflection, dispersion, delay, and attenuation, which cannot be neglected when broadband signals propagate along the interconnect. In addition, the presence of non-linear drivers and receivers call for efficient time-domain models. This lecture aims to present an overview of the state-of-art in interconnect modeling with special attention to rational macromodels, state-space realization, model order reduction, and parametric macromodels.
2. The Partial Element Equivalent Circuit Method
   SI and EMC engineers often prefer to work with electrical equivalent circuits rather than electric and magnetic fields. The geometrical complexity of today’s electronic systems and the broadband frequency of interest make it necessary to adopt numerical methods to solve Maxwell’s equations. Among the integral-equation based methods, the Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) method has gained an increasing popularity among SI and EMC engineers due to its capability to provide a circuit interpretation of the electric field integral equation (EFIE), thus allowing it to handle complex problems involving EM fields and circuits. Since its introduction, the PEEC method has evolved and new models have been added over the years, including dielectrics, lossy and dispersive dielectrics, and magnetic materials. The aim of this lecture is to give a short introduction to the Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) method and present some of the most recent advancements which make the PEEC approach well suited to be used for analyzing many different EMC problems including crosstalk, antennas, lightning, skin-effect modeling, power electronics, and signal integrity.
3. Sensitivity Analysis in Signal Integrity Applications
   The recent advances in fabrication methods and the rapid increase in operating speeds, density, and complexity of modern integrated circuits has made signal integrity a challenging task for high-frequency circuit designers. Consequently, high-speed interconnects modeling has become crucial to properly capture physical effects such as reflection, crosstalk, and propagation delays. The increased circuit density requires that designers make the proper trade-offs between conflicting design requirements using optimization techniques, to obtain the best possible performance. To this aim, efficient and accurate sensitivity information with respect to interconnect parameters are required by optimizers which employ powerful gradient based techniques and need the knowledge of sensitivities of the output responses. The lecture aims to present sensitivity analysis techniques in both frequency and time-domain with respect to either geometric or physical parameters.

Omar Ramahi is a Professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He is well known for his work in fullwave simulation for EMC applications as well as for his research in Electromagnetic Bandgap Structures. He is a co-author of a well known book on Computational EM for EMC.
     Omar’s topics include:

1. Electromagnetic Band Gap Structures for Noise Mitigation in Printed Circuit Boards and Packages
   This talk explores how electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures, which are essentially exotic types of filters, enabled the design of power distribution networks that keep interference due to switching circuits to a minimum. The use of EBG for reducing board and package emissions are explored as well. Succinct exposition of the EBG theory is discussed without elaborate mathematical analysis.
2. The Exotic World of Metamaterials and its Relevance to EMI/EMC Engineers
   Metamaterials refers to engineered material with properties that do not exist in naturally available media. Exotic properties of metamaterials include negative index of refraction, negative permittivity, negative permeability or even negative permittivity and negative permeability simultaneously. Such metamaterials created much excitement over the past few years, but can there be any practical application for EMI/EMC engineers? Can metamaterials provide solutions to some of the severe challenges in the areas of shielding and filtering? We will explore these questions and show that the field of EMI/EMC can benefit significantly from the development of metamaterials in the general area of shielding and filtering.
3. Computational Electromagnetics and Electromagnetic Modeling: A Virtual Laboratory for EMC Engineers or an Academic Exercise!
   While laboratory measurements remain the real proof that a certain product meets or violates certain EMI/EMC standards, computational electromagnetic and modeling remain an indispensable tool in the design process. In this talk, we explore advances in the field of computational electromagnetics and modeling. We show that computational electromagnetics can enhance our understanding of what is essentially the most fundamental radiating source within a structure. In fact, computational electromagnetics continues to be an excellent virtual laboratory for the designer who wants to explore the “what if” question before embarking on costly designs that may or may not work.
4. What Causes Radiation?
   The field of EMI/EMC shares its heritage with antenna and propagation engineers, on the one hand, and physicists on the other. For the later group, much of the 20th century was spent on developing ways to predict the radiation due to some source or sources. Physicists, on the other hand, are interested in making the connection between the movement of the elementary charged particle, the electron, and the radiated field. EMI/EMC engineers are interested in the work of these two groups, but would also like to know which sources/currents are the ones that cause radiation! Is such a dichotomy a mere academic or philosophical exercise or does it have relevance to practical engineering practice? In this talk we explore the fundamental question of “what causes radiation” from a purely practical and engineering-relevant perspective.

Mark Steffka was judged by the students to have given the top lecture during the Global University at the IEEE EMC Symposium in 2007 in Hawaii. Not only is he a full time employee at General Motors working in the EMC group, but he is also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus and also at the University of Detroit-Mercy. His practical knowledge of EMC and his enthusiasm for the topic makes his class one of the most popular courses at the Universities.
     Mark’s topics include:

1. Automotive EMC
   This topic covers EMC approaches applied to automotive systems, from the conventional “legacy” systems to the latest developments in electric vehicle propulsion. There is discussion about the unique environment that automotive systems function in and how some of the methods used to meet automotive system functional requirements can determine the vehicle’s EMC characteristics. Typical automotive EMC requirements are identified and examined, along with “case studies”.
2. Conducted Emissions, Power Supplies, and LISNs
   With the proliferation of digital methods from data communication to machine and equipment control, as well as the increasing use of switched mode power supplies (SMPS), conducted emissions are becoming more of a concern. This topic discusses the physics involved in conducted emissions, how to measure those emissions, the trade-offs in power supply issues versus EMC, and effective filtering methods. Diagnostic methods to identify the nature and source of conducted emissions are presented as well as corrective actions to solve those problems are identified.
3. Antennas and Transmission Lines
   The effective and efficient use of radio frequency communication is solely dependent upon transferring electromagnetic energy to and from an antenna. This energy transfer is also responsible for EMC issues. Many engineers today working in EMC (as well as those working in electronic system design/development) either have not had a formal background in antennas and transmission lines, or have not had an opportunity to practice their previous knowledge or skills in this area. Since these components can “make or break” a product’s EMC compliance, or render a system non-functional – it is critical that there be an understanding of the issues involved. The topic material consists of a review of antenna and transmission line theory, use of the relevant basic mathematics, overview of computer methods to assist in antenna design, and “real-life” examples.
4. Process and Benefits of Industry/Academic Linkage in EMC Education
   One of the unique aspects of EMC is that it is the integration of academic-based theory as applied to the “real world”. This creates a challenge for the ability of either academia or industry to independently “teach EMC” adequately. The typical result is that in an academic setting, either the theory is emphasized, with little linkage to applications, or in an industry setting only the applications are studied and those become a “cookbook” approach for all EMC issues. Bridging the gap between the knowledge in academia and the applications in industry is critical to any successful EMC work. This topic examines the methods that need to be considered when trying to fill in this gap and highlights examples of successes of that work.

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