EMC Week in Zurich

The 16th International Zurich Symposium and Technical Exhibition on Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC Zurich ’05) was again held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, February 13–18, 2005. 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 organized by the Laboratory for Electromagnetic Fields and Microwave Electronics under the sponsorship of Electrosuisse. In contrast to previous years, this time the symposium covered a full week of workshops, tutorials, topical meetings and – as the core event – three days of EMC sessions. The exhibition was organized in the gymnasium of the ETH, which provided about 1000 m2 of floor space to 39 exhibitors. Compared to EMC Zurich ‘03, the attendance rate of 550 participants from 40 countries was about 15% higher. This, and the presence of the many national and international cooperating organizations like the IEEE EMC Society, URSI, and the IEE, as well as others, made this a truly international event.

The Technical Program Committee (TPC) is shown hard at work just prior to EMC Zurich.

Three generations of EMC Zurich Presidents gathered in 2005, including (from left) Ruediger Vahldieck, Peter Leuthold, and Thomas Dvorak.

Prof. R. Vahldieck, Symposium President, chaired the opening ceremony on Tuesday morning. He outlined the future plans of EMC Zurich and highlighted the fact that EMC Zurich, as one of the best and well-known EMC symposia in the world, will also be held in the future at other locations, not just Zurich. The rationale behind this move is to enable other countries and regions to also participate more actively in EMC Zurich than was possible in the past. In this context, he announced the 17th EMC Zurich Symposium to be held in Singapore in 2006 (February 28–March 3, 2006) and introduced the president for that symposium, Dr. Erping Li.
Year 2005 coincides with the 150th anniversary of the ETH Zurich, and several speakers highlighted the long tradition of research excellence at the ETH Zurich. Vice-President Research (ETH) Prof. U. Suter, Prof. T. Hubing and Dr. L. Kueng addressed the audience on behalf of the ETH administration, the IEEE EMC Society, and the City of Zurich, respectively. The highlight of the opening ceremony was the keynote speech given by Dr. M. Marcus, formerly with the Federal Communications Commission and currently a visiting researcher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, who spoke on how “EMC Paints the Lane Markings on the Wireless Information Highway.”

The President of EMC Zurich in Singapore 2006, Erping Li, addressed the audience during the opening ceremony.

The EMC Zurich 2005 Technical Program Committee Co-Chairmen included Pascal Leuchtmann of ETH Zurich (left) and Bob Olsen of Washington State University.

Despite the continuing difficult economical environment, paper submissions were almost at the customary level. From the total of 191 submissions, 121 were accepted and presented in 23 sessions covering a broad range of areas in the field of electromagnetic compatibility. In addition, the pre-program two days before the opening of the symposium offered tutorials meant to serve as primers for important upcoming issues in EMC. Three tutorials were held on Modeling and Simulation of Electromagnetic Fields, while another dealt with SAR in Human Organs. All four tutorials showed a high attendance rate, underlining their relevance and importance to the EMC community. Parallel to the tutorial session, six workshops were held on Field-Based Synthesis and Computer Aided Design of Electromagnetic Structures, Field Strength Meters/Radiation Monitors, Advances in Site Validation Techniques above 1 GHz, Automotive EMC Simulation, EMC for IC and State-of-the-Art of E-Safety Technology on Vehicles. In spite of tight scheduling, all six topics drew large audiences and at times intense discussions evolved.

The Student Prize Winner (2nd place) at EMC Zurich, Ms. Kia Wiklundh.

The Best Student Paper Award Winners at EMC Zurich, including (from left) Sven Battermann (3rd place), Pascal Leuchtmann, (TPC Co-Chair), Luca Antonio de Michele (1st place), Kia Wiklundh (2nd place) and Bob Olsen, (TPC Co-Chair).

The poster sessions at EMC Zurich drew a lively audience.

Janet O’Neil of ETS-Lindgren, Tapan Sarkar of Syracuse University, Magdalena Salazar-Palma of Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Elya Joffe of KTL Project Engineering in Isreal, and John Norgard of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (from left) appreciated the international contributions to EMC Zurich.

Andy Marvin from the University of York, UK (left) visited with his part time graduate student, Jari Jekkonen of Nokia Finland, during EMC Zurich.

Parallel with the symposium sessions, three topical meetings were held: One on Reverberation Chambers with 10 contributions; one on Biomedical EMC with 30 papers; and last but not least, in the COST 281 Meeting, the question of “Make sinusoidal versus non-sinusoidal wave forms a difference?” was discussed mainly with regard to biological effects.
The papers in the 23 symposium sessions covered a wide variety of EMC issues. The technical program committee, co-chaired by Prof. Dr. R. Olsen and Dr. P. Leuchtmann, as well as over 200 reviewers from all over the world, did a great job selecting the best papers and grouping them as well as possible into the appropriate sessions. Besides the more traditional EMC topics, papers on bio-electromagnetics, 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. In addition to the aforementioned tutorials on Modeling and Simulation of Electromagnetic Fields, two sessions were devoted to Computational Electromagnetics. The computation of electromagnetic fields was also a central topic in the sessions on Chip and Package Level EMC, EMC in Communications, Chip Level EMC, System Level EMC and Automotive EMC. The complexity of modern EMC structures makes model order reduction techniques and other mathematical techniques important enablers in EMC simulations. Without these techniques, the computational space for many EMC problems will soon become too large for mainframe computers, not to mention of workstation and personal computers.

Perry Wilson of NIST (left) brought along his lovely wife Kay to one of the EMC Zurich social events. They are joined by Heinz Wipf of Skyguide.

Immediate Past President of the IEEE EMC Society, Todd Hubing of the University of Missouri at Rolla, spoke at the opening ceremony.

Ken Hall of Hewlett Packard (left) met with Paolo Corona of the Naval University of Naples during EMC Zurich.

Carl Baum of the Air Force Research Lab (left) and John Norgard enjoyed a technical discussion during EMC Zurich.

Adam Tankielun of Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (left) visited with Sungtek Kahng of the University of Incheon in Korea.

Mark Bolsover of Boeing Australia (left) and Markus Rothenhausler of EADS in Germany caught up on aerospace developments during EMC Zurich.

The first prize in the student paper competition went to Italy, namely Fabio Pareschi, Luca Antonio De Michele, Riccardo Rovatti and Gianluca Setti, for the paper titled “A PLL-based clock generator with improved EMC”. Kia Wiklundh from Sweden won the second prize for the paper on “Bandwidth conversion of the amplitude probability distribution for emission requirements of pulse modulated interference”. The third prize went to S. Battermann and H. Garbe from the University of Hannover in Germany for the paper titled “Sensitivity of a short-wave receiving station regarding PLC transmission.” The associated prize money was 1000, 750 and 500 Swiss Francs, respectively. For the student paper competition, a total of 39 papers were submitted. In addition to the regular presentation in their respective symposium sessions, the student papers were also presented as posters in the interactive forum. The jury consisting of Prof. R. Olsen, Dr. W. Radasky, Prof. K. H. Gonschorek, and Dr. P. Leuchtmann selected the winners.
The exhibition this year was organized by Gerotron Communication GmbH in the gymnasium of the ETH, which provided the 39 exhibitors with about 1000 m2 of space on one floor. Although the number of exhibitors was larger than two years ago, this number is still too small to help keep the attendance fee low. This problem needs to be addressed if EMC Zurich wants to maintain the exhibition as a viable link between the ivory tower and the real world.

Shown enjoying a social event following EMC Zurich are (from left) Mike Marcus, Keynote Speaker at the opening ceremony, Dan Hoolihan of Hoolihan EMC Consulting, Barry Wallen of Dell, Todd Hubing, Bob Olsen, and Takeo Yoshino.

Speakers gathered following the workshop on “Advances in Site Validation Techniques above 1 GHz” including (from left) Don Heirman of Don HEIRMAN Consultants, Angela Nothofer from the National Physical Laboratory, Pierre Beeckman of Philips, Clark Vitek of Extreme Networks, Ken Hall of Hewlett Packard, Michael Foegelle of ETS-Lindgren, Alexander Kriz of ARC Seibersdorf Research, and Dieter Schwarzbeck of Schwarzbeck Mess-Elektronik.

The social highlight was certainly the symposium banquet in the Zurich Kongresshaus with nice entertainment, good food and wine. Other social events included the wine tasting party on Monday evening, the welcome reception in the exhibition hall on Tuesday, the poster apéro as a side event of the interactive forum on Wednesday noon and the farewell party on Thursday.
The 15% increase in the attendance rate of EMC Zurich ’05 shows that 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 ’06 in Singapore (www.emc-zurich.org), which will take place in the dynamically evolving South-East Asian region and underlines the ambition of EMC Zurich to maintain and even enlarge its truly international character. EMC