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Symposium
President Prof. R. Vahldieck, ETH Zurich, addressing the
audience during the opening ceremony.
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The 15th International Zurich Symposium &
Technical Exhibition on Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC Zurich
'03) was again held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
(ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, February 18-20, 2003. The Symposium
took place in the main building of the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology, which offered an impressive surrounding, convenient
conference facilities and easy access to the city of Zurich. The
event was jointly organized by the Communications Technology Laboratory
and the Laboratory for Electromagnetic Fields and Microwave Electronics
both of the ETH Zurich under the sponsorship of the SEV Association
for Electrical Engineering, Power and Information Technologies.
The more than 475 participants from 41 countries and the many
national and international cooperating institutions such as the
IEEE EMC Society, URSI, the International Telecommunications Union
(ITU), the IEE as well as others (EBU, IEICU, VDE, SEP, ÖVE,
SESKO, AEI, and the German Association for EMC-Technology (DEMVT))
made this a truly international event.
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| Lots of technical details and free
beer at the booth of Rohde&Schwarz. |
Professor Ruediger Vahldieck, Symposium President, chaired the
opening ceremony on Tuesday morning. At the occasion of this 15th
anniversary of EMC Zurich, Professor Vahldieck gave a brief review
of its history. He honored Professor Thomas Dvorak who initiated
EMC Zurich back in 1975 and is still its Honorary Chairman today.
He then thanked Dr. Gabriel Meyer, who has decided to step down
as conference chairman, for his many years of service and he emphasized
that without Gabriel Meyer's dedicated effort, EMC Zurich would
not be what it is today. In the following comments, Vice-President
for Research (ETH), Professor U. Suter, Professor Todd Hubing
and Dr. K.A. Hughes addressed the audience on behalf of the ETH
administration, the IEEE EMC Society and the ITU-R in Geneva,
respectively. The highlight of the opening ceremony was the keynote
speech given by Dr. M. Repacholi from the World Health Organization
(WHO), who spoke on "What Are the Health Effects of EMF and
What To Do About Them."
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| TPC Chairman Fred Tesche after a
job well done. |
Despite the difficult economical environment, paper submissions
were at an almost normal level of 187. From those, 131 contributions
were accepted and presented in 19 sessions covering a broad range
of areas in the field of electromagnetic compatibility. In addition,
the traditional pre-program one day before the opening of the
symposium offered tutorials that were meant to be a primer for
important upcoming issues in EMC. Tutorials were held on Modeling
and Simulation of Electromagnetic Fields, Optimization Problems
arising in EMC and EMV, Packaging Issues in High-Speed Circuits
and The Application of Reciprocity Theorems in EMC Measurements.
All four tutorials showed a high attendance rate underlining their
importance to the EMC community. Parallel to the session, four
workshops were held on Quantitative Data Comparison, Power
Line Communications, Emission Measurements with Alternative Methods
and GEMCAR European Project. Despite their tight scheduling
all four topics drew large audiences and at times intense discussions
evolved. The Industrial Forum took place on Thursday and was intended
to give the EMC industry a platform to present not so scientific
issues. A total of seven contributions were presented on such
diverse topics as Comparison of EMC Test Laboratories, Ergonomic
Manuals for Product Safety and Quality, Comparison of Immunity
and Emission Measurements in Reverb Chambers, and Analysis of
Finnish EMC Market Surveillance and Suggestions for Development.
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| Albert Rühli as chairman of
the session on Large Chip and Package EMC Modeling. |
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| Exhibitor booth of CST Microwave
Studio. |
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| The student paper winner G. Steinmair
with TPC Chairman Fred Tesche. |
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| All three student paper winners at
the Banquet. From left: M. Sabielny (third prize), Ch. Bruns
(second prize), G. Steinmair (first prize). |
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| Dr. G. Meyer, Symposium Chairman
and Ms. Simmen. |
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| Elya B. Joffe staffed the IEEE EMC
Society Booth. |
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| Carl Baum investigating the fluid
dynamics and the taste of beer from Rohde &Schwarz. |
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| Some guests of honor during the opening
ceremony. Starting from right: Dr. Borer, SEV, Prof. M. D'Amore,
Prof. Ianoz, Dr. G. Meyer, Dr. F. Tesche. |
The papers in the 19 sessions covered a wide
variety of EMC issues. The technical program committee (TPC),
chaired by Dr. Fred Tesche, as well as all the reviewers did a
great job in selecting the best papers and grouping them as best
as possible into the appropriate sessions. Besides the more traditional
EMC topics, papers on test chambers, EMC innovation and automotive
EMC attracted large audiences. It is interesting to note that
numerical modeling of electromagnetic fields is increasingly becoming
a central tool in many areas of EMC. Besides the tutorial on Modeling
and Simulation of Electromagnetic Fields, one full session was
devoted to EMC Modeling. The computation of electromagnetic fields
was also a central topic in the sessions on Signal Integrity and
CAD modeling, Test Chambers, Large Chip and Package EMC Modeling
and Automotive EMC. The complexity of modern EMC structures makes
model order reduction techniques an important topic in EMC simulation.
Without model order reduction techniques the computational space
for many EMC problems will soon become too large for main frames,
not to mention workstation computers. It is therefore no surprise
that the first place in the student paper competition went to
the author of one of the initial papers on this topic: G. Steinmair
from BMW and his co-authors H. Katzier, R. Weigel, and M. Troescher
for the paper "Switching Noise and Ground Bounce Simulation
on Packages and on PCBs Using PEEC and Model Order Reduction Techniques".
Ch. Bruns from the ETH won the second place for his paper on "Three-dimensional
Method of Moments Simulation of a Reverberation Chamber in the
Frequency Domain". The third place went to M. Sabielny and
H.-D. Bruens, TU Hamburg-Harburg, for the paper "Practical
Aspects of the Physical Optics - Moment Method Hybrid Method".
The prize money was 1000 CHF, 750 CHF and 500 CHF, respectively.
For the student paper competition, a total of 14 papers were submitted.
Of those, the Technical Program Committee selected the three best.
A final presentation was held during the conference in front of
a jury consisting of Professor Fred Tesche, Professor Marcello
D'Amore, Dr. Gabriel Meyer, Professor P. Degauque and Professor
K.-H. Gonschorek. The jury decided the winners.
The exhibition this year was not as large as in previous years.
With only 31 exhibitors, this presents a problem that needs to
be addressed if EMC Zurich wants to maintain the exhibition as
a link between the ivory tower and the real world. Although the
economic climate has much to do with this years' low attendance
rate by companies, new ideas are welcome to attract larger exhibitor
numbers in the future, and the new management committee of EMC
Zurich '05 is already actively working to generate these ideas.
The social highlight of EMC Zurich was certainly the Symposium
Banquet in the Grand Hotel Dolder with entertainment, good food
and wine. The grand ambience of this fine Hotel always assures
a memorable event that, at the same time, also marks the symposium
midterm. On Thursday, the last day of the Symposium, all authors
were invited for lunch and received a generous present in the
form of an optical wireless mouse from Logitech. A rich social
program for spouses and guests was also available every day during
the symposium ranging from a visit to the Abbey-District (UNESCO
world heritage site) and Chocolate-Land to the Engelberg Monastery
cheese factory and Lake Luzern. On Friday after the Symposium,
groups visited the Logitec development laboratories in Romanel-sur-Morges
and EM Microelectronics, a Swatch Group Company in Marin.
Although the attendance rate of EMC Zurich '03 was down from previous
years, it was an overall success with many excellent presentations,
many interesting stories told and many interesting ideas exchanged.
It is now time to look forward to EMC Zurich '05 which will take
place during the year in which the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology celebrates its 150th anniversary. This anniversary
will be celebrated over the entire year of 2005 with numerous
events organized by the different departments of the ETH. EMC
Zurich '05 will be the first event in the week of 16-20 February
2005. We promise you a special week full of EMC activities. EMC
