Introducing Andy Marvin
The EMC Personality Profile for this issue of the IEEE EMC Newsletter is our new Fellow, Dr. Andy Marvin. Andy’s Fellow Citation reads “for contributions to metrology techniques for electromagnetic compatibility.” I would like to congratulate Andy for his election to the IEEE Fellow Grade.
     Andy received a BEng (1972) and a MEng (1974) from the University of Sheffield. His Ph.D. degree was awarded by the University of Sheffield in 1979. His Ph.D. research was on super-directive active array antennas. He worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Sheffield for the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment at Malvern, United Kingdom on an active super-directive array antenna and as an engineer with British Aircraft Corporation (now BAES). He was a Lecturer, a Senior Lecturer and a Professor at the University of York Department of Electronics. Also, he was Technical Director of York EMC Services Ltd.
     Andy has been an active researcher for over thirty years with an emphasis on metrology related to EMC measurements and shielding effectiveness of materials and enclosures.He has made substantial and sustained contributions to EMC metrology throughout his career. His contributions have been significant in both the academic and industrial arenas. He initially worked on antennas and later worked on unintentional radiators and that was his introduction to EMC.
     Andy started working on developing more ‘scientific’ radiated emission measurements. He developed an understanding of the ways in which screened enclosures can be used for the quantitative measurement of the emissions from equipment-under-test (EUT) in measurements associated with the UK Def STD 59/41 and US MIL- STD- 461. The use of dielectric absorbers at optimized positions within the volume of the enclosures reduced the effects of enclosure resonances in the frequency range below 200 MHz at a time when ferrite based absorbers working down to 30 MHz were not available.
     He developed the now de facto world standard broadband EMC measurement antenna structure (the BILOG and its many derivatives). The key to this antenna structure is the optimized combination of the broadband dipole derived from the original biconical antenna and the log-periodic dipole array to achieve an antenna factor without significant rapid frequency variations from 30 MHz to 2 GHz and beyond. This frequency range was unprecedented upon its introduction in 1994. These antennas are still in production by TESEQ (and other manufacturers).
     Andy was responsible for a series of continuous spectrum noise sources for monitoring the performance of EMC emission measurement systems. Manufactured by York EMC Services, these sources known as the Comparison Noise Emitter (CNE) cover the frequency range from 9 kHz to 7.5 GHz. Worldwide sales have been achieved over the last twenty years. As a result of the development of the CNE and its use in radiated emission measurements, Andy demonstrated the importance of phase effects in the correlation of radiated emissions measurements of EUTs made in GTEM cells and on Open-Area Test Sites.
     Andy originated the re-emission spectrum technique for diagnostics of radiated immunity measurements of complex digital equipment where error detection and correction software masks the direct observation of equipment immunity effects. This work was originally funded by GCHQ and later by the UK Radio Communications Agency through York EMC Services. This work led to the award for the 2004 IEEE Transactions on EMC Prize Paper.
     The work on enclosures has concentrated on the use of representative contents inside the enclosures to mimic the effects of the real contents of the enclosures while in use. The contents in an enclosure have a major impact on the energy penetration into the enclosure and energy absorbed into the contents is manifested as interference. Representative contents based on the use of absorbing materials have been developed as a consequence of the observation that complex circuit cards could be effectively numerically modeled inside enclosures by homogeneous dissipative sheets. The observation is extended back to the use of homogeneous absorbers instrumented with field probes to measure the energy absorbed by the contents. Recently, the work has concentrated on the measurement of shielding of smaller equipment enclosures in the microwave frequency range and contributions to IEEE Standard 299 Working Group on Shielding Effectiveness Measurements.
     In addition, Andy provided technical direction for the design and production of a series of comb generator sources used primarily for shielding measurements of enclosures that are believed to have the widest frequency range available (up to 40 GHz). These are manufactured by York EMC Services originally under contract to Intel.
     Andy has also made a contribution to numerical modeling through his early development of transmission line and waveguide circuit-based models used initially to examine the behavior of screened enclosures used as a screened room for radiated emission measurements and as equipment enclosures. This work has been further developed by Andy and others in his research group and in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Nottingham into a class of numerical models known as Intermediate Level Computer Models. These offer rapid solutions to increasingly complex problems enabling populations of models to be used for statistical studies in electromagnetic modeling. The success of these techniques is illustrated by the high citation rate of papers describing the technique. One example is the seventh most cited paper in the IEEE EMC Transactions in the last twenty five years. It now has 144 citations (source – Google Scholar). This work is being developed further by Andy’s group as part of a major EU aerospace research program, HIRF-SE.
     In addition to his research work, Andy has been active in EMC education including running a Masters Degree program at York for a number of years. He has taught many industrial courses on EMC since 1982 and this year at the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on EMC he is due to contribute again to the Global EMC University and to the EMC Fundamentals Tutorial.
     Andy has been involved in various professional activities. He has been a member of he IEEE for 26 years, served on the EMC Society Board of Directors, was Associate Editor of the Transactions on EMC, Chair and Faulty Member of the IEEE EMC Society Global EMC University, and Vice-Chair of IEEE Standard 299 Working Group on Shielding Effectiveness Measurements.
     Andy was Co-Founder (along with Professor Antonio Orlandi) of the EMC Aviators’ Club. Founded in 2007, this club is open to all IEEE EMC Society members who have an interest in aviation. They meet at symposia and on other professional visits and encourage members to arrange to fly together where possible. See the club website at https://orlandi.ing.univaq.it/EMCfly/index.htm for more information.
     Andy has also been active in the IEE Professional Group on EMC. He was a Member of the IEE Professional Group on the Fundamental Aspects of Measurement. He was awarded the “Maxwell Premium” and the “Marconi Premium” (two awards) for co-authorship with a graduate student of three papers in the IEE Proceedings on Science Measurement and Technology. He was UK Delegate to URSI Commission A (Electromagnetic Metrology) and a Member of the R & D Advisory Committee for the UK National Measurement System. He is currently Chair of the EMC Europe 2011 York Conference.
     Andy has been married to Heather for 35 years. She is a volunteer manager at the local hospice and is a keen musician. Her string quartet will be playing at the EMC Europe 2011 York Dinner. They enjoy mountain walking together.
     For fun, Andy flies gliders (proper gliders with big white wings – not hang gliders) and trains glider flying instructors.
     Also, Andy samples the local beer where ever he goes to establish that nothing beats a decent pint of English bitter served at a sensible temperature (10C or 50F).
     Andy and Heather have a daughter Ros who is a hospital doctor in Cambridge but may soon also be a professional photographer. Their son Tom is based in the French Alps as part of a three man start-up company selling sustainable adventure holidays.                               EMC