Austria

The managing director Dr. Martina Schwaiger of the Seibersdorf Laboratories is shown with the secretary general, Mr.Peter Reichel, of the Austrian Electrotechnical Association (right) and Dr. Kurt Lamedschwandner, chair of the IEEE EMC Austria Chapter (left).

Dr. Kurt Lamedschwandner reports that on March 18th, 2010, the 8th Annual Austria EMC Symposium took place at the campus Seibersdorf, Austria. The annual symposium was organized by the Austria Chapter of the IEEE EMC Society, along with the EMC Division of Seibersdorf Laboratories and the Austrian Electrotechnical Association (OVE) in cooperation with the Institute for Electronics (TU Graz) and Johannes Kepler University Linz. More than 90 participants from Austria and Germany visited the event. The aim of the Symposium is to exchange knowledge within the EMC community, consisting of members from industry, trade and research & development. The technical program included eleven presentations covering a wide variety of EMC related topics, ranging from “The use of mode-stirring chambers for susceptibility testing” to “EMC of integrated circuits”. The referees for 2010 included Peter Mair, Peter Boxleitner (Fronius International, Wels-Thalheim, Austria); Uwe Karsten (Teseq, Berlin, Germany); Prof. Dr. Timm Ostermann (Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria); Lorandt Fölkel (Würth Elektronik, Waldenburg, Germany); Dr. Gunter Winkler (Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria); Dr. Bernd Deutschmann (Infineon Technologies, Munich, Germany); Karl-Heinz Weidner (Rohde & Schwarz, Munich, Germany); Rüdiger Späth (EM TEST, Kamen, Germany); Christian Türk (Ministry of Defence and Sports, Vienna, Austria); and Dr. Kurt Lamedschwandner (Seibersdorf Laboratories, Seibersdorf, Austria). In addition to the symposium, the attendants were informed about product novelties by the exhibiting companies Würth Elektronik, Rohde & Schwarz, UEI, deg and AKG.

Over 90 people participated in the one day EMC event organized by the Austria EMC Chapter.

Austria EMC Chapter members, speakers and exhibitors.

Chicago
The Chicago IEEE EMC Chapter’s 2010 opening evening meeting on February 17th was hosted at ELITE Electronic Engineering in Downers Grove. In addition to the venue, ELITE also supplied complimentary pizza for the 30 attendees. After a brief general business meeting, Tom Revesz of HV Technologies spoke on transient testing. Tom reported on AC mains CDN improvements and advances in EFT measurements. Dips and interruptions also have tighter and more refined waveforms. ESD improvement efforts and round-robin tests still show some inconsistencies. All were encouraged to examine and closely control the many factors of their ESD setups. Tom reported advances in modeling and simulation for ESD which are driving refinements in high bandwidth targets and their nearby structures as well as discharge tip R/C network waveforms. On February 20, for the second year in a row, the Chapter supported the DuPage Engineers Week Expo at the IIT-Rice Wheaton campus. Hundreds of young students were exposed to two full

Steve Laya of ELITE urges guests to enjoy pizza at the Chicago Chapter February meeting.	Tom Revesz of HV Technologies takes a question at the Chicago Chapter February meeting.
Bob Hofmann demonstrates a Van DeGraff generator at the DuPage Engineers Week Expo in Chicago.	Chris Dewitt, Francesca Maradei, Jack Black, Marilyn Sweeney, and Don Sweeney (clockwise from lower left) enjoy dinner prior to the Chicago Chapter meeting.
At the March Chicago meeting, the featured speaker, Francesca Maradei, makes a point about PCB impedance plane modeling.	Tom Braxton, Programs Co-Chair, awards a speaker’s plaque to Francesca Maradei at the March Chicago meeting.

floors of engineering exhibits. Bob Hofmann and Jerry Meyerhoff displayed a Van DeGraff generator, radio noise emissions from dimmers or CFL bulbs and shielding effectiveness. The March 9th meeting was generously held at the IIT-Rice Wheaton campus and co-hosted by the Chicago Chapter of Women in Engineering (WIE). The featured speaker was EMC Society President, Francesca Maradei, Associate Professor at Sapienza University of Rome. The Chapter provided a catered complimentary Chicago-Style buffet dinner of fried chicken, Italian beef, salads and dessert cookies. The 35 attendees enjoyed the time to catch up and share stories. After dinner, the meeting moved to the comfortable seating of the auditorium. There was a brief Chapter open business meeting with reports from the committees, orchestrated by Chapter Chair, Jack Black. Ms. Maradei’s opening talk “The IEEE EMC Society: The Present Picture and Short Term Directions” was an excellent overview of the many services and benefits provided to our Society’s members. During the Q&A session, the topic of the recent Toyota “unintended acceleration” was posed. Understandably, this was cause for a lively dialog among participants and the presenter. Clearly, we could not determine the role of EMC, if any, in this small forum. There was a hunger for more technical facts and a desire for some action from the EMC Society, to assure the public that the industry and our profession is diligent with processes, procedures, standards and training to control such phenomena. Francesca’s second detailed tech-talk, “Modeling of Power Distribution Networks in Printed Circuit Boards” addressed design challenges in high speed digital products. She described the underlying physical phenomena in high speed digital circuits, including standards such as IEC 62433 and explained the roots of impedance models for power planes. Then, she described prediction tools such as SPICE and 3-D full-wave solvers, including generic cases with comparisons against actual measurements. Using appropriate levels of complexity for the tools, the models converged toward one another and measurements. As a specific example was explained, various configurations of bypass and decoupling capacitors were analyzed, leading to some recommended guidelines for design. During the Q&A, Francesca enumerated additional analysis tools and participants shared their modeling experiences. The Programs Co-Chair, Tom Braxton, capped the extensive and enjoyable evening by awarding Francesca a Thank-You Event Plaque. Look to www.emcchicago.org for news, meetings and events, skillfully maintained by webmaster Frank Krozel of Electronic Instruments Associates. Our programs committee of Andrea Spellman of UL and Tom Braxton of Shure Brothers has completed a great speaker lineup. In May, the Chapter is planning the 12th MiniSymposium featuring Bruce Archambeault of IBM, all organized by Frank Krozel. Our experienced Executive Committee is looking forward to another great year serving our members’ needs.

Oregon and SW Washington
Alee Langford, Chapter Vice-Chair, reports that the Oregon and SW Washington Chapter had their annual holiday party at Who Song and Larry’s on the beautiful Columbia River. Everyone enjoyed the parade of the Christmas Ship Fleet, and the wonderful food that was served. In January, Ed Blankenship presented “Extracting Useful Information from Radiated Emission Test Site NSA and VNSA Data Sets.” This presentation explored historical and technical details of the radiated emission site attenuation techniques. Dan Huumala of Würth Electronics presented February’s topic on the use of magnetics in EMC covering the basics of induction, coupling mode, filter topologies, simulation tools, measuring and application. The following month, Greg Kiemel of Northwest EMC Inc. presented the “FAQ’s at the Test Lab” answering commonly asked questions. Upcoming spring events include Distinguished Lecturer, Ji Chen presenting “Developing Nano-scale Structures for EMC/EMI” and Dr. Howard Johnson’s video presentation followed by Q/A. The Chapter has scheduled all meeting topics for the rest of the year and looks forward to the exciting events still to come. Visit the Chapter website for details: https://ewh.ieee.org/r6/oregon/emc

Phoenix
Glen Gassaway reports that the first Phoenix Chapter meeting of 2010 was held on January 19 at Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant in Tempe, AZ. This time we had the largest attendance ever, completely filling the meeting room and several tables outside of the meeting room! Our originally scheduled speaker was not able to make it due to transportation problems. So, our Chapter Chair, Harry Gaul, stepped in at the last minute to give a presentation on Site VSWR Measurements for CISPR 16 Site Validation Above 1GHz. As of October 1, 2011, the European Union will require product conformance to EN55022:2006 A1 (2007), which requires radiated emissions testing above 1 GHz for products with internal clocks greater than 108 MHz. No “grandfathering” will be allowed for products already on the market. In the past, Normalized Site Attenuation (NSA) measurements were used to qualify a test facility for radiated emissions testing. However, NSA is not useful above 1 GHz since directional antennas are typically used in that frequency range. To verify that a test facility is adequate for testing above 1 GHz, procedures for Site VSWR testing have been developed by CISPR/A and are presented in CISPR 16-1-4. The test

PHOTO BY STEVE GERARD
Phoenix Vice-Chairman Daryl Gerke (standing at right) thanks Harry Gaul for his presentation on Site VSWR measurements to the Phoenix Chapter.	Phoenix Chair Harry Gaul (left) presents Jin Min with an Arizona Highways calendar in appreciation for his presentation to the Phoenix Chapter on Immunity Scanning.

methodology involves placing a receive antenna on a tripod and measuring the emissions of an omni-directional source antenna located in free-space or on a non-conductive (e.g., polystyrene) table. At least 18 source antenna positions are required in both horizontal and vertical receive antenna polarizations. Test frequencies should be in 50 MHz steps from 1–6 GHz. The source antenna positions extend along the center line of the turntable and along a ‘V’ formed by the edges of the test volume. Maximum versus minimum values cannot be apart by more than 6 dB. Problems have been encountered when attempting to meet Site VSWR, even in an absorber lined chamber. Potential areas of concern include: EUT table material (polystyrene blocks work well as opposed to wood or high density plastic), tripods, antenna positioners, door handles, floor absorber layout and wall absorber characteristics. On Thursday, February 25, the EMC Chapter hosted Kyungjin “Jin” Min, Chief Operating Officer, Amber Precision Inc. (API), who spoke on “EMC Immunity Scanning – A New Way to Look at System Level Immunity.” Jin filled in for Michael Hopkins who could not make it because of a broken leg. Jin brought Michael’s slow motion video clips of a lightning strike that proved to be of great entertainment to the 18 attendees.

Santa Clara
On Tuesday, February 9, 2010, Dr. Cheung-Wei Lam of Apple spoke to the Santa Clara Valley Chapter on the topic, “Common Misconceptions about Inductance and Current Return Path.” In today’s high-speed digital system design, a good understanding of inductance and current return path is important to signal integrity and EMI control. Unfortunately, several key concepts about the two have often been misunderstood or overlooked. This presentation discussed the key concepts and

Dr. Cheung-Wei Lam of Apple addressed “Common Misconceptions about Inductance and Current Return Path” with the Santa Clara Valley Chapter.

some common misconceptions about inductance and current return path. Examples were given by Dr. Lam to helpfully demonstrate these concepts at the chip and PCB levels. Dr. Cheung-Wei Lam is currently the Chief EMC Technologist at Apple where he has implemented a fully automated and customized EMC layout and schematic checking system. At Apple, he is also engaged in chip, PCB and system level EMC design and research. Prior to joining Apple, he was a Co-Founder and Principal Engineer at Transcendent Design Technology and, earlier, a Principal Engineer in Viewlogic’s Advanced Development Group (formerly Quad Design Technology). From 1988 to 1993, he was with the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, where his focus was on modeling of high-speed interconnects and superconducting transmission lines. Dr. Lam received the B.S. degree in electronics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. He has authored or presented numerous technical papers and presentations on EMC and signal integrity related subjects in the US, in Europe and in Asia. He was a co-recipient of the best paper award at the 1996 IEEE EMC Symposium. He is a past IEEE EMC Society Distinguished Lecturer and currently serves on the IEEE EMC Society Respected Speakers Bureau. He has also served on the IEEE EMC Society TC-9 Computational Electromagnetics committee, the IEEE EMC Society TC-10 Signal Integrity committee, and the SAE EMC Modeling Task Force committee. On March 9, Dr. Sergiu Radu of Sun Microsystems, a 2009-2010 IEEE EMC Society Distinguished Lecturer, was the guest speaker for the Santa Clara Valley Chapter. After networking time and a light dinner, Dr. Radu gave a very informative lecture entitled, “An Overview of Chip Level EMC Problems.” The CPUs and the VLSI chips are the primary sources of electromagnetic noise in all electronic equipment. Reducing electromagnetic noise at the source level is usually the best and the most economical solution. The presentation

PHOTO BY JERRY RAMIE

Dr. Sergiu Radu of Sun Microsystems shed light on the topic on Chip Level EMC for the Santa Clara Valley Chapter.

discussed typical interference mechanisms associated with CPU/VLSI, as well as mitigation methods at the die-level and package level. Among the aspects discussed were some power distribution issues, on-die decoupling, package capacitors, routing aspects, the impact of back-bias and forward-bias, and the impact of die-shrinks on the EMI performance of the VLSI chips. Dr. Sergiu Radu is currently Principal Engineer at Sun Microsystems, leading the EMC design group in Menlo Park, California. His role at Sun includes the development and implementation of architectural frameworks for EMC design through design guidelines and best practices, and to provide forward looking solutions, root cause analysis of significant EMC problems, design methodologies involving software simulations and better prediction techniques. Sergiu Radu received a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (Electronics) from the Technical University of Iasi, Romania, and until 1996 he was an Associate Professor at the same university, involved in electromagnetic compatibility teaching and research. From 1996 until 1998 he was a Visiting Scholar, as part of the Electromagnetic Compatibility Laboratory, at the University of Missouri-Rolla, currently Missouri University of Science and Technology. In 1998 he joined the EMC engineering group at Sun Microsystems. Sergiu holds seven US patents for EMI reduction techniques in electronic systems and has many papers published in research journals, symposia, and magazines. He is a reviewer for IEEE Transactions on EMC. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE EMC Society.

Seattle

SEATTLE PHOTOS BY JANET O'NEIL
Attendees at the Seattle EMC Chapter meeting in March enjoyed seeing the DVD of EMC Society Founders sharing “War Stories” from the Society’s 50th Anniversary Symposium.	Dr. Omar Ramahi drew a good crowd for the Seattle EMC Chapter’s March meeting at Boeing.
Seattle EMC Chapter Chair, Dennis Lewis (left) of Boeing, showed the Chapter’s appreciation for Dr. Ramahi’s two excellent presentations with a gift of Starbuck’s Coffee.	Following the March meeting, Seattle Chapter officers stopped by the Museum of Flight to check out the space reserved there for the Chapter’s one day colloquium and exhibition on June 28.

Chapter Chair Dennis Lewis of Boeing reports that the Seattle EMC Chapter hosted EMC Society Distinguished Lecturer Omar Ramahi of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada (www.ece.uwaterloo.ca/~oramahi) at its quarterly half day meeting on March 23. The afternoon started with a buffet lunch from Panera Bread. Following lunch, Chapter members visited several table top exhibit displays from companies that sponsored the excellent lunch. Many thanks to Lionheart Northwest, ETS-Lindgren, AR/RF Microwave Instrumentation and Cascade TEK for supporting the Chapter! Chapter members then enjoyed two presentations by Dr. Ramahi. The first presentation was titled, “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 includes negative permittivity, negative permeability or even negative permittivity and negative permeability simultaneously resulting in negative index of refraction. Such metamaterial created excitement over the past few years. Dr. Ramahi’s presentation addressed the following questions: Can metamaterial offer any practical implication or even application for EMI/EMC engineers? Can metamaterial provide cost-effective solutions to some of the severe challenges in the areas of shielding and filtering? In the presentation, the topic of metamaterials was demystified. Once the fundamental properties of the different types of metamaterials were presented, the effectiveness of such material in different EMI/EMC and other engineering applications became clear. He explored some important applications of metamaterials in EMI/EMC applications. While the presentation covered the fundamental principles behind metamaterials, emphasis was placed on practical real-world engineering applications. The second presentation was titled, “What Causes Radiation?” Dr. Ramahi explained how the field of EMI/EMC shares its heritage with antenna and propagation engineers on the one hand, and physicists on the other. For the former group, much of the 20th century was spent on developing ways to predict the radiation due to some source through complex analytical and numerical schemes. 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. Since the field of EMI/EMC engineering is related to a large degree to radiation, EMI/EMC engineers would naturally be interested in the work of these two groups. However, EMI/EMC engineers have keen interest in understanding which sources/currents are the ones that cause radiation; a question that is typically ignored by the two groups of physicists and propagation engineers. After all, if the source of radiation is found, containing it becomes easier than not knowing it in the first place. In his presentation, Dr. Ramahi explored the fundamental question of “what causes radiation” from a purely practical and engineering-relevant perspective. He showed that powerful numerical schemes, circuit models, and analytical techniques, while potentially providing elegant and full solution to the radiating problem, fail to highlight the physical phenomenon of interest to EMI/EMC engineers in the first place unless careful attention is paid to… the fundamental sources of radiation! Following the second presentation, the meeting attendees were treated to an educational technical tour of Boeing’s EMC and lightning labs. Omar M. Ramahi is a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and holds the NSERC/RIM Industrial Research Associate Chair, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He holds cross appointments with the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He has authored and co-authored over 200 journal and conference papers. He is a co-author of the book EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook, 2nd Ed. (Springer-Verlag, 2001). Presently, he serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging. Professor Ramahi is an elected IEEE Fellow and is currently serving as an IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Distinguished Lecturer. The Seattle EMC Chapter heartily recommends a lecture by Dr. Ramahi to other EMC Chapters. He is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his topics! For more information on the Seattle EMC Chapter’s quarterly activities, visit www.ieee-seattle.org.

Shanghai – Welcome to the EMC Society’s Newest Chapter!
Hongmei Fan reports that on April 17, 2010, at Shanghai University Yanchang Campus, about 20 EMC professionals from various

SHANGHAI PHOTOS BY YANG BIN
Mr. Esa Korhonen, the IEEE EMC Shanghai Chapter Chair, announced the establishment of the Chapter.	Dr. Franz Schlagenhaufer of the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy at Curtin University of Technology, in Perth, Australia, presented “Electromagnetic Fundamentals for the EMC Engineer” at the Shanghai Chapter meeting.

countries gathered to celebrate the inauguration of the IEEE EMC Shanghai Chapter. After more than one year’s preparation, the Chapter finally has been founded. Mr. Esa Korhonen, the IEEE EMC Shanghai Chapter Chair, announced the establishment of this Chapter, which is composed of 12 members from Esju, Cisco, Siemens, NXP, Alcatel-Lucent, Delta, Marvell, Intel, Jabil, Intertek, Bureau Veritas, and ViewTran. After his enthusiastic opening speech, Dr. Franz Schlagenhaufer, Senior Research Engineer with the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia, gave a one-hour talk on “Electromagnetic Fundamentals for the EMC Engineer.” The talk demonstrated the relationship between theoretical and practical aspects of electromagnetics, using examples from inductive coupling and shielding. Later Professor Francesca Maradei, the IEEE EMC Society President, introduced the geographical distribution of the IEEE Society, benefits and procedures of IEEE membership and provided some useful links of the IEEE EMC Society. When Francesca showed up in a wheelchair followed by three of her Italian colleagues, Professor Marcello D’Amore, Professor Mauro Feliziani and Dr. Alessio Tamburrano, the whole audience was quite surprised. She fell down at her hotel in Shanghai and injured her ankle. The seminar room applauded, touched by her professional spirit. The inauguration became official with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The red ribbon was held by Franz and Hongmei Fan (the IEEE EMC Shanghai Chapter Co-chair), and cut by Esa and Francesca with ‘golden’ scissors. The two-hour event ended with many photos being taken by Bin Yang. Everyone present is confident the Chapter will become more active and beneficial over time.

Franz Schalgenhaufer, Francesca Maradei, Bei Ni, Esa Korhonen and Hongmei Fan (from left) participated in the red ribbon-cutting for the IEEE EMC Shanghai Chapter inaugural meeting.

The Shanghai EMC Chapter inaugural event attendees included (first row from left) Xiaojun Mao, Yimin Xu, Jianhua Zhu, Hongmei Fan, Feihuang Hu, Dihua Shi, and Weigang Chen. Second row from left are Wei Wang, Rongzheng Zhou, Mauro Feliziani, Franz Schlagenhaufer, Francesca Maradei, Esa Kornonen, Ke Zhang, Marcello D’Amore, AlessioTamburrano, and Bei Ni.

Singapore
Richard Gao Xianke, Chair of IEEE EMC Singapore Chapter, reports that their Chapter invited Professor Qing Huo Liu from Duke University, USA, for a technical speech entitled “Computational Methods for Electromagnetic and Nanodevices,” on January 8, 2010. The seminar attracted 28 people, of which 15 were IEEE members. On January 28, Professor Joungho Kim from KAIST, Korea, delivered a Distinguished Lecturer talk entitled, “Signal Integrity of TSV Based 3D IC.” The Singapore Chapter held an administrative meeting on February 1. Dr. Richard Gao Xianke, Chapter Chair, hosted the meeting and all members enthusiastically discussed the Chapter Plan for 2010. Dr. Chua Eng Kee, Chapter Treasurer, updated the financial balance in 2009. The committee passionately discussed the 2010 work plan, which includes organizing seminars and Distinguished Lectures, short courses, membership development drive, EMC design/project student contest, social activities and forming a joint EMC/PSES Chapter. On February 2, Professor Raj Mittra from Pennsylvania State University delivered a speech entitled, “A New Look at the Performance Limitation of Small Antennas from the Viewpoint of an Antenna Designer.” Chapter Chair, Dr. Richard Gao Xianke, attended the IEEE Singapore Section first general committee meeting at Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre on February 12. All committee members discussed and reviewed the section reports and plans for 2010. The meeting also provided a wonderful dinner to all of the attendees. On February 27, the Chapter organized the first social event in 2010, “Chapter Committee Gathering with Families.” The event was held at Singapore Flyer which towers 165 meters above the city and is a brand-new waterfront attraction like no other. Eight committee members with their families experienced the world’s largest observation wheel which has unobstructed and breathtaking views of the city’s night scenery. After taking in the sights, committee members and their families enjoyed a delicious seafood dinner. On March 10, Professor Jin-Fa Lee from the Ohio State University, USA, delivered a half-day technical workshop entitled, “CEM Algorithm Workshop”, at Temasek Laboratories, Singapore. Professor Lee presented a number of topics which included “Integral Equation Domain Decomposition Method (IE_DDM)”, “Randomized Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to Speed Up ML-FMM”, “Non-Conformal DDM with Higher Order Transmission Conditions and Corner Edge Penalty”, “Multi-region/Multi-Solver DDM with Touching Regions”, and “Discontinuous Galerkin Time Domain (DGTD) Method with GPU Implementation”. The workshop was well attended with 21 total attendees, 12 of which were IEEE members. On March 25, Professor W. H. Siew from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, delivered a technical talk entitled, “Large Systems EMC”, at the Institute of High Performance Computing of A*STAR, Singapore. There were a total 29 attendees, of which nine were IEEE members.

Professor Joungho Kim from the KAIST, Korea, gave a DL talk at the Institute of High Performance Computing of A*STAR in Singapore on 28 January 2010.	Participants listened attentively during Professor Kim’s DL seminar for the Singapore Chapter.	Professor Joungho Kim (left) appreciated a speaker gift of a tie and a T-shirt with IEEE and EMC Society logos presented by Dr. Richard Gao Xianke, chair of the Singapore EMC Chapter.
Professor Kim is shown with Singapore EMC Chapter members (from left to right): Dr. Chua Eng Kee, Dr. Zhang Yaojiang, Dr. Liu Enxiao, Dr. Richard Gao Xianke, Professor Joungho Kim, Dr. Erping Li, Mr. Timothy Foo, and Dr. Wei Xingchang.
Professor Jin-Fa Lee (center) from Ohio State University, USA, delivered a half-day workshop in the Temasek Laboratories at NUS, Singapore, on March 16. Dr. Richard Gao Xianke (third from right), Chapter Chair, showed his appreciation and presented him with a T-shirt having the IEEE logo following the meeting.		Professor W. H. Siew from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, gave a technical talk at the Institute of High Performance Computing of A*STAR, Singapore, on March 25

Southeastern Michigan
Candace Suriano and Scott Lytle report that on February 18, 2010, Christopher Semanson presented an awesome talk and demonstrations to the Southeastern Michigan EMC Society Chapter. Chris has voluntarily developed a series of invaluable and interesting labs to complement Mark Steffka’s undergraduate EMC class at the University of Michigan-Dearborn using the EMC Society’s Laboratory Manual. Chris first gave attendees an overall understanding of the labs and their utility to understanding EMC. He strategically introduced the labs so that each lab built on the theory learned in the previous labs. Next, Chris took meeting attendees to a room where he had all the labs set up. They were allowed to enjoy interacting with the demonstrations used in the labs. Chris told us stories concerning the demonstrations for the labs. One of the favorite stories involved Chris talking to an instructor that told him that his circuit would not work without a zero point. Chris had the students measure noise inherent to a variety of conductors. They were stunned that a damaged coax cable would generate the most noise. His students did an amazing job on their final project of making a DC permanent magnet motor quiet. Not only did this add a design project for ABET accreditation; it was fun for the students. One student even shorted the line to the case, as is done in industry. If you want a great presentation, ask Chris to come visit. Enjoy!

Christopher Semanson begins his February presentation on “Practical EMC Laboratory Experiments” to the Southeastern Michigan Chapter.	One of the many practical EMC laboratory experiments is demonstrated at the February SE Michigan meeting by Christopher Semanson (left).	Kimball Williams, past president of the EMC Society, enjoys an evening of lab experiments at the February meeting of the SE Michigan Chapter.

Twin Cities

Jessica Pedersen of Tennant Company is shown in the front row with Norman Shpilsher of Intertek on the left in the second row and Yuriy Litvinov of Intertek on the right at the Twin Cities Chapter meeting.	Dr. Robert Nelson (left) and Brodie Pedersen, Twin Cities Chapter Chair.

Dan Hoolihan, Senior Member, reports that a meeting of the EMC Chapter of the Twin Cities Section was held on April 14, 2010. The meeting was hosted by Brodie Pedersen, the Chapter Chair, at his place of employment, Nonin Medical, Inc. in Plymouth, Minnesota. It was a noon-luncheon meeting with a guest speaker from Wisconsin. Dr. Robert Nelson from the University of Wisconsin at Stout spoke on “Interference from Broadband over Power Line (BPL) – An Overview of the Problem and of Attempts to Predict It.” Dr. Nelson gave a power-point based presentation on his research efforts including the use of Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP) simulations and Electromagnetics Interactions Generalized (EIGER) simulations. He also explained the difference between Power Line Carrier transmissions (which operate between 20–450 kHz) and BPL transmissions (which operate between 2–80 MHz).

United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland
Paul Duxbury, Chapter Chair, reports that the UK&RI Chapter held their first meeting of the year on March 18 in Nottingham, with the support of CST UK. The first presentation was from Brian Copsey looking at the implications of the reassignment of parts of the UHF TV band to mobile communications – the so called ‘Digital Dividend’. During his talk he showed the results of several measurements he has taken to assess the level of interference which could be caused to analogue receivers due to the applications proposed for this band. As this is a very topical issue, and one which has a high probability of causing interference issues, a lively discussion followed the presentation. Attendees then heard from Zaid Muhi-Eldeen Al-Daher of Nottingham University on research work which they have been doing looking at the measurement of radiated emissions from equipment with cables inside GTEM cells as well as methods for characterizing the cell. The final two talks explored the subject of radar cross section (RCS), both in terms of the modelling of RCS and also the results of some work looking at reducing the RCS of off-shore wind farms. During his talk, Paul Duxbury of CST described how, depending on the electrical size of the problem being considered, different computational techniques can be used for modelling RCS. He also included a simple example demonstrating how the material properties and shape of an object impact on its RCS. He concluded by showing how the design of a lunenberg lens, often used on small yachts, results in an RCS significantly bigger than its physical size. For his talk, John Terry of Hitek Electronic Materials showed a video of the radar display on a boat as it sailed close to an off-shore wind farm. In the video, the interference caused by multiple reflections from the towers of the wind farm could be clearly seen with ghost images of the turbine towers appearing on the radar display. He also went on to discuss some of the techniques which can be used to reduce both the RCS of the towers and the radar interference.                                                                       EMC

Attention All Chapter Chairs! Shown with the Edison dynamo (from left) are Giordano Spadacini, Flavia Grassi, and Sergio Pignari. Sergio is the new IEEE EMC Chapter Coordinator. The new Chapter Coordinator of the IEEE EMC Society is Sergio Pignari. Please send all updates for new chapter chairs and their contact information to Sergio for updating the IEEE Listserve. Sergio may be reached at s.pignari@ieee.org.   Some of you may remember Sergio as he and his colleagues provided the answer to the riddle posed in the Summer 2009 EMC Newsletter. He is shown at right with his colleagues in the EMC group at the Politecnico di Milano, Department of Electrical Engineering. They are standing with the solution to the riddle – the “unidentified apparatus” – which is a dynamo, a DC machine used to convert mechanical to electrical power, as patented by Thomas A. Edison. To read the complete story on the dynamo, see the Fall 2009 issue of the EMC Newsletter.