Associate Editor for Chapter Chatter
Todd Hubing (L) takes a break from
attending the technical presentations
during the Seattle Symposium to visit
with Robert Hughes of Intel.
Conversations at the Rolla Downtown Barber Shop are always interesting and generally more productive than our city council meetings. I generally try not to say too much though. The topics are usually controversial and I don’t want to argue with the person cutting my hair. Two of the worst haircuts I’ve had in my life were the result of conversations about power bus decoupling and shielding effectiveness.
The other day, they were discussing the IEEE EMC Society President’s Memorial Award. This award honors a deceased, eminent member of the EMC Society through scholarship support for graduate study given in his or her memory. The $2,000 scholarship is the society’s most prestigious award. At the Seattle symposium, the award was made in honor of Richard B. Schulz, a former editor of the EMC Transactions and past-president of the EMC Society. The recipient was Rodolfo Araneo, a young graduate student at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” who is destined to become a prominent contributor to the field of EMC. Everyone in the barbershop agreed that this year’s award recipient and honoree were excellent choices.
I thought that this was a fairly non-controversial topic so I joined in. Most of the people in the barbershop didn’t realize that the President’s Memorial Award is funded entirely through private contributions. I suggested to Donzie, the barber, that the Rolla Downtown Barber Shop should make a contribution to the fund. Donzie replied that he would be happy to contribute if he could give me a haircut like Don Heirman’s. Donzie thinks everyone should have a Don Heirman haircut.
Many of you know Don Heirman. He is Vice-President for Standards and a past-president of the EMC Society. He has been a major contributor to the EMC Society for more than twenty years. His picture often appears in this newsletter and looking back through past issues, it appears that Don hasn’t aged a day since he first joined the society. Also, during that entire time he has had the same haircut.
Don’s hair is quite a bit shorter than I normally wear mine; so I was reluctant to accept Donzie’s offer right away. I asked a graduate student to generate a composite image on the computer to give me an idea of how I would look with a Don Heirman haircut. The result is shown below:
What do you think? Not bad really (some would even say quite handsome) and it is for a good cause. Ok, I told Donzie that if he and a few other businesses would contribute a total of $10,000 to the President’s Memorial Award fund, I would get a Don Heirman haircut. I told him all he had to do was send his contribution to:
Warren Kesselman
Treasurer, EMCS
31 Hope Road
Tinton Falls, NJ 07724-3009
Donations are tax deductible. If the fund gets $10,000 in contributions prior to the EMC Symposium in Washington D.C. this August, I will get my hair cut like Don Heirman’s. Also, if the Rolla Downtown Barbershop or any other major contributor to this fund has a booth at the symposium, I will help staff their booth during the symposium. Perhaps Don Heirman will join me. If so, we will be sure to wear nametags so that your customers can tell us apart.
The EMC Society Austria chapter elected a new chairman (Dipl.-Ing. Kurt Lamedsch- wandner) and a new secretary (Dr. Gerhard Diendorfer) on the 27th of May. The vice chairman (Dipl.-Ing. Habel) and the treasurer (Dipl.-Ing. Horak) were re-elected. After the election, attendees were treated to a very interesting lecture by Prof. Douglas M. Jordan, University of West Florida, Pensacola, USA. The topic of his presentation was “Electrical and Optical Properties of the Lightning Discharge.” The chapter later held a nice social event in Vienna.
In June, an EMC session was sponsored and organized for ELECTRO 99 in Boston. John Luchini and John Clarke were co-chairs. Robert Martin, of Intertek Testing Services, presented a paper on “Use of Technical Construction Files as a Method of Demonstrating Compliance to the EU’s EMC Directive.” Ronald Emerich, of Global Semiconductor Safety Services, gave a presentation titled: “Laser Safety: Introduction to CDRH and IEC Laser Safety Requirements." Jim Wright, of Global Semiconductor Safety Services, presented a paper titled “Understanding and Designing to Comply with SEMI S2.”
Autumn is here and it’s time to return to the EMC Society meetings after the long summer break. We are off to a great start. Our first meeting was held in September at Lucent Technologies’ auditorium. Dr. Clifford Kraft from Lucent presented an interesting and practical session on “Coupling into Cables.” He ended with the following hints for reducing coupling: for inductive coupling, reduce the area of the receptor loop and ground shield at more than one point and for capacitive coupling, reduce the length of the center conductor extending beyond shield and ground the shield at a minimum of one point.
The Chicago chapter continues to schedule meetings and speakers that promise to enlighten and expand one’s knowledge of EMC. Please watch your e-mail for the dates, places and times of our upcoming events. If you would like to receive e-mail regarding meetings, please send your request to mmartin@dlsemc.com. Maxine would be happy to add your name to the e-mail list. We are beginning to make plans for another mini-symposium to be held in May 2000. Tom Braxton is hoping to snare a “Big Name” in EMC for our technical program.
The April meeting of the Dallas chapter of the EMC Society was held on April 19th at Hewlett Packard in Richardson, Texas. The guest speaker was Distinguished Lecturer Donald Bush who spoke on Spread-Spectrum Clock Techniques. We had 25 people in attendance (17 were IEEE members).
The May meeting featured EMC Society Distinguished Lecturer Robert Dockey of Hewlett Packard, who spoke on “New Techniques for Reducing Printed Circuit Board Common Mode Radiation.” There were 38 in attendance (22 were IEEE members).
Election of Officers for 1999-2000 for the Dallas chapter of the EMC Society was also held during the May meeting. Mark Bushnell (Raytheon - Greenville) was elected as Chair, Gary Shimko (Marconi Communications) was elected as Vice-Chair and Bill Paschetag (SpectraPoint Wireless) was elected as Secretary-Treasurer.
No Dallas chapter meetings were held during June, July and August.
The September meeting was held at Hewlett Packard in Richardson. The guest speaker was Jim Press, Chief Engineer, National Technical Systems, who spoke on “Lightning.” There were 39 in attendance (21 were IEEE members).
The French Chapter of IEEE EMCS and Club 25 of SEE France have started a new development program, of which the regular publication of a Newsletter is an important part. The NEWS represents the follow-up of LEAD-NEWS of October 28, 1998, acknowledging a quantum step in the development of Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) in France and Europe, with the cooperation of local national scientific Societies, comprising SEE France (and IEE in the UK, VDE in Germany, INI in Italy, etc.).
The cooperation between IEEE EMCS and SEE Club 25 will undergo a major overhaul. In addition, free evening conferences and post-university educational seminars will be organized. The first evening conference was held on October 18. Prof. Ferdy Mayer, chair of the French EMCS chapter, repeated the demonstration presented at the 1999 IEEE International Symposium on EMC titled “New Broadband Absorbers” assisted by the staff of Co. SIEPEL. New reflectivity improvements were demonstrated between 30 MHz and 1 GHz.
Prof. Mayer, who is also the Region 8 Membership Chairman for the IEEE EMC Society, represented the Society at the Division I and IV Region 8 chapter meeting in Leuwen (Louvain), on September 12.
A new series of monthly technical meetings started in Berlin on April 21, one day after the official re-opening of the Berlin Reichstag as the seat of the German Parliament. The meetings were held at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (TFH Berlin), organized and chaired by Prof. Ermel.
The April meeting featured Dr. Diethard Hansen of Euro EMC Service speaking about “Performing Radiated Immunity and Emission Measurements Economically and Complying.” Over 30 attendees listened to a profound explanation of the technical and economical limitations of radiated EMC tests in absorber chambers and of the problems with the measurement accuracy of conventional OATS. Practical solutions and alternative sites were discussed in depth.
The Reichstag in Berlin after its reconstruction in 1999.
At the May meeting, Uwe Kampet of Bosch Siemens, Berlin, and Dr. Wolfgang Hiller of Robert Bosch Company, Stuttgart, presented a new test method for measuring the magnetic flux density in the vicinity of household appliances. The topic of the June meeting was “Net-based Training Systems for Effective PCB Design Concerning Signal Integrity and Analysis.” Werner John of Fraunhofer Institute of Reliability and Microintegration made a special trip from Paderborn to Berlin for this presentation of an interesting new EMC training system for intranets. At the July meeting, Eckart Hoene spoke on “Optimization of Filters for Conducted Electromagnetic Emissions by New Simulation and Measurement Methods.” He presented current results of his Ph.D. thesis in progress.
The Berlin University of Applied Sciences (TFH Berlin),
center of the regional EMC activities.
All summer meetings were organized by the Berlin- Brandenburg EMC Society (“EMZ”), a small society of EMC experts in the so-called “electropolis area” of Berlin, in co-operation with the German IEEE EMC Chapter. Professor Garbe and Professor Ermel agreed to continue this successful line of regional meetings and to intensify the co-operation for mutual benefit. The winter program 1999/2000 will start in October. For more information, please contact the web site www.emv-zentrum.de.
About 30 professionals attended the April presentation of
Dr. Diethard Hansen (standing on the right) at the Berlin
University of Applied Sciences.
The Mohawk Valley Section EMC Chapter held a meeting on 11 June prior to the summer hiatus. Seventeen members and guests were in attendance for the luncheon meeting which had as a guest speaker Professor Mairtin O’Droma of the University of Limerick, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Limerick, Ireland. Mairtin’s talk was on “High Frequency Nonlinear Power Amplifier and EMC Concerns: Accurate Prediction of Undesired Amplifier Output by Numerical Methods.” The talk began with a brief review of microwave and millimeter wave power amplifier behavior as a function of frequency and incident power. Such amplifiers are becoming ubiquitous with mobile communications. Good models of these devices are important for accurate calculation and counteraction of the impairments due to their nonlinear effects such as spectrum spreading, intermodulation products (IMPs) and out-of-band emissions all which give rise to EMC concerns. The problems are more acute when designing transmitter front-ends for applications requiring efficient use of limited available energy resources, where tradeoffs must be made between competing requirements e.g., power efficiency and undesired emissions. This presentation included a review of Shimbo’s Nonlinear Amplifier (NLA) model focusing on how insights gained through a new mathematical derivation enable more accurate and controlled modeling of these nonlinear devices to be accomplished. Constructing a numerical model from device measurements was also discussed, along with how the model has recently yielded additional insights into an unexpected asymmetry associated with device IMP measurements previously attributed to measurement error. Both empirical and analytical results were shown where the latter was based on a computer simulation program developed by Mairtin and his colleagues that accurately models the performance of circuits containing amplifiers and other nonlinear elements.
It should be mentioned that Mairtin O’Droma’s professional experience is quite eclectic. Before entering academia, he worked on the design of Ireland’s first transmit/receive satellite earth terminal which became part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Orbital Test Satellite (OTS) program. This was followed by the design of high bit-rate data communications, a VSAT type telecommunications network which links high-energy physics laboratories across Europe. He was also the senior telecommunications engineer for the ESA group responsible for data analysis of the classical repeater tests of the OTS. In academia, he has held lecturing posts in University College Dublin, National University at Galway and at the University of Limerick. Besides fundamental research, he has been involved in a number of R&D projects for telecommunications companies and has been Director of several engineering companies including Communications Software Ltd. and ODR Patents Ltd. His range of research interests include: engineering design by simulation and modeling of complex telecommunication systems/subsystems and certain classes of nonlinear microwave and mm-wave devices; signal processing algorithms for Smart antennas; and public and private telecommunication networks (such as ISDN, B-ISDN, GSM, UMTS and satellite networks), particularly the design of specialized protocols and services for telecommunication network devices and terminals.
The timing of Mairtin’s presentation couldn’t have been better. In fact, many of the members and guests in attendance had been studying topics on component nonlinear behavior in mobile communications systems, so his talk was very well received. The presentation generated many questions and quickly evolved into a highly dynamic information exchange forum. Our thanks and appreciation goes to Mairtin for his contributions and support of the chapter’s activities!
Chapter Chair Andy Drozd later announced that he was planning to invite an EMC Distinguished Lecturer to give a presentation in the Fall of 1999. Andy continues to poll engineers and technical managers in the Mohawk Valley concerning their subject areas of interest in order to plan chapter meetings. One of the areas of interest expressed by circuit designers and PCB manufacturers in the Mohawk Valley Region is the control of board-level EMI in high-sensitivity electronics packages. This is expected to be a topic at an upcoming meeting.
In September, the Mohawk Valley Section’s Reliability and EMC Chapters were formally merged. The EMC Chapter is the lead entity. All reporting, administration and related activities as a consequence of this merger will fall under EMC. This merger is expected to revitalize membership participation in Reliability Chapter activities in the Mohawk Valley Region, and will result in a balance of topics to be covered in future meetings that appeal to those interested in or involved with both engineering disciplines.
93 people, including 30 IEEE members, attended a meeting of the Nanjing chapter on August 24th. This meeting featured two speakers. Prof. Wen Xun Zhang, of Southeast University gave a presentation titled: “The Trend of Antennas Development.” Jack Qiu, of AnSoft Corporation, gave a presentation titled: “Introduction to EM Simulators.” On August 25th and 26th, the chapter was a co-sponsor of the 1999 National Symposium on Antennas. 66 papers were presented at this symposium in three parallel sessions.
On September 24th, the Nanjing chapter hosted another meeting featuring two speakers. Prof. Wei Cao, of the Nanjing University of Post & Telecommunications, spoke on “Propagation Models for Land Mobile Communications.” Prof. Wen Xun Zhang, of Southeast University, gave a presentation titled: “The Simple Formulae of Propagation Path-Loss for Planning PCN Cells.”
The Orange County Chapter of the IEEE EMC Society sponsored a one-day colloquium on Design for EMC and EMC Troubleshooting Techniques at the Double Tree Hotel in Costa Mesa, California, on October 4th. Four of the most respected experts in the EMC arena were on hand at the event, titled “EMCFest ‘99”, to present talks and answer questions on a variety of EMC topics. The event’s goal was to provide an opportunity for low cost, cutting edge education on EMC related topics to EMC professionals in the region who may not have the opportunity to attend the Society’s annual Symposium on EMC. Also on hand with the latest in EMC mitigation products and test equipment were 24 vendors, who were kept busy answering questions and providing information to over 60 attendees.
Break time was busy time in the exhibits area for EMC
Fest '99 in Orange County. The one day EMC Colloquium
and Exhibition on October 4 drew engineers from
Santa Barbara to San Diego.
Randy Flinders (R), Chairman of EMC Fest '99, visits
with Ken Shepherd of Amplifier Research, one of the
reception sponsors at the event.
The presentations included four invited technical papers. After the crowd had consumed an ample amount of coffee at the continental breakfast, Dennis Ward of CKC Labs started the tutorial with his presentation, “An Overview of EMC Requirements.” This talk provided the audience with up-to-date information on EMC standards and requirements from throughout the world. It was truly amazing to watch Dennis condense four hours of information on this topic into a one-hour talk. In an industry where the standards and requirements change faster than the weather, the insight and information provided by Dennis was very well received by the crowd.
Upon the completion of Dennis’ excellent presentation, Lee Hill of Silent Solutions dazzled everyone with his presentation on “Inductance and Radiated EMI in PCBs and Cables.” Lee went on to characterize the one true nemesis of the EMC Engineer: Inductance. Everyone present left with a good understanding of how inductance creates problems and what to do to resolve those problems. At the very least, they walked away with the term “LEAD INDUCTANCE” removed from their vocabulary! Lee also presented an excellent demonstration in the Exhibit Hall, and judging by the huge crowd gathered around his demo station, it was very popular!
Lee Hill (L) demonstrated the material he presented
during the technical sessions at EMC Fest '99 to an
appreciative audience. Terry He (foreground) of Boeing
in Long Beach thought this was the best part of the event!
She's an active member of the Orange County and
Los Angeles EMC Chapters.
Mike Krumweide of NEMKO (EESI) (L) was the proud
winner of Dr. Howard Johnson's book titled "High-Speed
Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic." Dr. Johnson
is shown ready and able to personally autograph his book.
Dr. Johnson was one of the speakers at EMC Fest '99 in
Orange County.
Kristen Blakney of CASSPER Instumentation Systems is
overcome with emotion having just won the raffle prize
"EMI Supression Handbook: Communiques from the
Trenches" at EMC Fest '99. On hand to present the book
and support Kristen is Daryl Gerke who co-authored the
book with William Kimmel.
Dr. Howard Johnson of Signal Integrity gave a presentation on “Ground Planes and Layer Stacking.” This was also very well received by the entire group of attendees. Coming from a signal integrity background, Dr. Johnson was able to offer the audience a different perspective on designing for EMC and signal integrity. The inter-relations between the two disciplines were pointed out, much to the interest of the crowd. Dr. Johnson’s command of the material and appealing speaking style got him rave reviews from many of the attendees.
Dennis Perry and Brian Halligan of Packaging and
Component Specialists were a few of the local vendors
who exhibited at EMC Fest '99 in Orange County.
Sid Kritzstein, President of Technologies West, couldn't
resist the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies during the
afternoon break at EMC Fest '99.
Now that the audience had received all of the information on worldwide EMC requirements from Dennis, and was armed with excellent design guidelines from Lee Hill and Dr. Johnson, they were ready to take on the world, right? Well, hold on a second. What if you know the standards, implement all of the design guidelines, and find you are still not quite meeting the specification? What then? That’s where Daryl Gerke’s talk comes in. His talk on “Diagnosing and Troubleshooting EMI Problems – Tips and Techniques” described how to diagnose and find difficult sources of EMI problems, as well as some quick fixes. He also covered immunity problems and offered advice not only on finding the problem, but fixing it as well. In case you don’t know, Daryl’s with Kimmel Gerke Associates.
So, from deciding what specification to test to, to designing the product to meet the requirements, to debugging a failing product, EMC Fest ’99 had it covered. The Orange County Chapter of the EMC Society would like to thank all of the speakers, vendors, chapter officers, and the attendees for making this event so successful and so much fun! A very special thank you needs to go out to Janet O’Neil of Lindgren RF Enclosures, whose guidance, coordination efforts, and selfless generosity made the event possible.
Allen Fischer of Fischer Custom Communications,
James Collum of Assured Access Technologies, and
Randy Flinders of Emulex (L-R) are shown during the
reception held at EMC Fest '99. James traveled from
Northern to Southern California to attend the colloquium
and exhibition. He won the drawing for the Clip-On
Current Probe (10khz) - 200 MHz) donated by Fischer
Custom Communications. That was worth the trip!
Ed Nakauchi did double-duty at EMC Fest '99. He was
the colloquium secretary/treasurer and he assisted
Norgene Ketchum of Garwood Labs in staffing their
booth during the event's exhibit hours.
The Fall season started with our traditional “Buster’s Bar-B-Que”! It was a hit as usual. We had approximately 35 folks at our September chapter round-up held at Tektronix. Scott Bennett got the minds thinking as he presented his talk on “The Basic Source of EMI.”
"Buster's BBQ" was the featured menu for the September
meeting of the Oregon and SW Washington chapter.
Shown enjoying the finger-lickin' good ribs are (L-R)
chapter members Laudie Doubrava, Andrew Meier, and
Jim Larson – all with Tektronix, who hosted the meeting
at their facility in Beaverton.
Scott Bennett spoke at the Oregon and SW Washington
chapter meeting in September. There was a raffle for his
book "Control and Measurement of Unintentional
Electromagnetic Radiation" following his presentation.
Katt Fretwell of Tektronix was the lucky winner and Scott
personally autographed his book for her.
The chapter officers were also involved with sponsoring an EMC session at Northcon ’99 on October 5th. The session called “Product EMC Compliance – Start to Finish” included the three following topics: Regulations, Standards and Worldwide Harmonization by Henry Benitez of Tektronix; Product Compliance Process and Test Preparation by Daniel Arnold of Underwriters Laboratories; and EMC Test Methods by Edward Blankenship of Hewlett-Packard.
The chapter is once again planning a Holiday get together as well as a superb monthly program.
Gino Dignetti reports that the September meeting of the Philadelphia EMC Society was held at the Drexel University Faculty Club. The featured speaker was Jim Nadolny, who presented a talk on the “Application of EMI Modeling in Design.” With the advent of commercial electromagnetic field solvers, modeling of electromagnetic interference problems becomes more practical. Mr. Nadolny presented a case study, which addressed the use of commercial code to understand a shielding problem. The case study centered on the shielding performance of a connector and correlated measured and modeled results. For some shielding problems, measurements are more suspect than the simulation and the combination of the two leads to confidence in the results.
[Thank you, Lyle Luttrell, for sending in the following update on the Rocky Mountain chapter activities.]
A band of 20 hearty souls braved the Boulder June weather to attend a customized tour of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, CO. The officers of the Rocky Mountain Chapter in conjunction with NIST arranged for the Society to visit three division laboratories. The Time and Frequency Division produces and maintains the national standards of time and frequency and coordinates them internationally; provides time and frequency services for the Nation, and performs research and development on new time and frequency standards and measurement methods. The Electromagnetic Fields Division conducts basic and applied research on the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with devices and materials, and the development and evaluation of measurement methods and standards needed to characterize both guided and free-space electromagnetic fields, and the performance of electromagnetic instruments, systems and devices. The Information Technology Laboratory responds to the growing need for measurement and testing technology to support the development of computing and communications systems that are usable, scalable, interoperable, and secure. This need has come into sharper focus in recent years with the national effort to develop an infrastructure to support a global information marketplace. Several technical contributors to the EMC Society, including Dr. Robert Johnk, Dr. Chris Holloway and Dr. Galen Koepke, were present during the tour.
Galen Koepke discusses some reverberation chamber concepts.
Vice Chair Charles Grasso (L) and Chair Lyle Luttrell (R)
welcome Daryl Gerke to the Rocky Mountain Chapter Meeting.
Inside the NIST near-field antenna test site with Katie MacReynolds.
Jim Grey discusses some time base measurements.
Chapter members Bob German and Barry Wallen are
ready for pizza.
Dave Bernardin, chair of the San Diego chapter, reports that their April meeting featured Mr. Jozef Baran and Mr. Mark Frankfurth. The subject of their presentation was “The Broadband Gigahertz Field Simulator Chamber.” The May meeting featured a talk on “Designing for Compliance and Safety” by Christine Ruther. Attendees of the June summer BBQ and meeting were treated to a talk by Stephen Watkins, Mike Marino and Ed Nakauchi on “EMI Ambient Cancellation and Source Localization.” At the September meeting, Charles M. Bayhi spoke on “Designing for Safety for the Year 2000 and Beyond.”
The chapter reconvened on September 28 for its first monthly meeting of the 1999-2000 season. The meeting was held at the all-new CKC Labs facility in Redmond. Pat Andre, Laboratory Manager at CKC Labs, led a tour of the new facility for those that arrived early. Carol Grout, Administrative Assistant at CKC Labs, did her best to ensure there was plenty of hot pizza and cold soft drinks for all. It was a nice, casual environment for the first chapter meeting after that REALLY BIG meeting (i.e. symposium) in August in Seattle. Scott Bennett was the speaker on the topic “The Basic Source of EMI — And the Key to EMC.” The basic source of EMI is the current element. Scott showed that by visualizing circuits as super positions of current elements — physically, not mathematically — the door to EMC is easily opened. There was perfect weather in Seattle during Scott’s visit so the chapter hopes he will return one day. In October, the chapter will feature Doug Smith on “Unusual Forms of ESD” and Maqsood Mohd will speak about “Lightning Effects on Electronics and Humans” at the November chapter meeting. It promises to be a good year of technical presentations for the Seattle chapter! If you plan a visit to Seattle, check out the IEEE Seattle Section web site at https://www.ieee-seattle.org/. You’ll find information about EMC Society Seattle chapter meetings and other society activities in the area.
Scott Bennett was the featured speaker at the Seattle
EMC Chapter's September meeting. The day following
his presentation, he took in an al fresco lunch on
Lake Washington with the Seattle Chapter's
Vice-Chairman, Janet O'Neil.