The IEEE EMC 2008 Symposium took place August 18-22 in Detroit’s Cobo Center with the headquarters hotel being the Marriot Renaissance along the Riverwalk – a beautiful park on the bank of the Detroit River. The “Rockin on the Riverfront” concert series featured Foreigner for those who could stick around for the last night.


The technical program was very strong with a variety of workshops/tutorials and a wide range of technical conference subjects. The workshops and tutorials included EMI modeling, various EMC tutorials like accreditation, antenna and probe use, modeling, measurements, design, automotive, system analysis, product safety, shielding, emissions and immunity, and more.

The symposium included a vast array of technical sessions with tracks including computational EM, PCB design, measurement techniques, automotive EMC, signal integrity, EM environment, system EMC analysis, EMC management, electromagnetic coupling, test facilities/instrumentation, emissions/immunity, shielding, product safety and open forums with special sessions on validation of simulation/modeling results, recent advances in jitter and BER analysis in high speed serial links, parallel processing algorithms, and impact of external noise sources on high speed signal integrity. There were also various demonstrations and experiments during the event.

Exhibition:
The exhibition included about 150 companies with AR, ETS Lingren and Rohde & Schwarz anchoring the exhibition in the front entrance area. ETS Lingren and R & S actually had overlapping booths showing how they can combine their hardware and software to create complete system solutions for various industries such as automotive EMC solutions. I thought this was a very nice approach to show such partnering right on the show floor.

From a RF/microwave perspective, AR featured its newer high power amplifiers such as its 700 W 0.8 - 4.2 GHz CW, 120 W 4 - 8 GHz CW and 20 W 10 - 20 GHz CW units. They had a wide variety of systems, but I especially liked their pre-compliance test system that comes complete with computer controlled, automated test system and chamber. Performing EMC testing in the design phase while you can still fix problems seemed to be a key trend at the show.

ETS Lingren featured their wide range of antennas and their Broadband E-field Monitoring Systems for EMC. Their E-field probes meet or exceed the requirements of automotive, MIL-STD and commercial EMC RF immunity standards. The HI6x22 probes are designed to provide the best low frequency measurement performance of any probe, the HI-6x05 probes are the “work horses” of the series offering superior mid-range performance in frequency bands specified by most test standards and the HI-6x53 probes achieve superior high frequency performance.

Rohde & Schwarz showed off their ESL EMI test receiver for cost conscious users who want to perform precise pre-compliance and diagnostic measurements up to 3 or 6 GHz. The compact instrument offers fully automated test sequences using the latest weighting detectors that conform to the CISPR 16-1-1 specifications.

Agilent has entered the EMC market by introducing EMI features in the X-series Signal Spectrum Analyzer with the following features (called the EMC option): CISPR 16-1-1 2007 compliant detectors, EMI bandwidths (CISPR & MIL STD), EMI presets, tune & listen, measure at marker, simultaneous EMI peak, EMI average, and quasi peak measurements, limit lines, amplitude correction, 40001 sweep points and all EMI features are PSA code-compatible.

Ansoft was showing how their software is integrated together with the same GUI. They showed how their software links together and to third party EDA and CAD tool from design to verification to system integration including their entire simulation suite of products: HFSS, Q3D Extractor, ePhysics, Nexxim, Ansoft Designer, AnsoftLinks, Optimetrics and Distributed Analysis.

A.R.A. was displaying their broad range of antennas from omni directional to directional to tactical including integrated systems.

ARC Technologies showed off their wide variety of EMI suppression and absorption solutions with it Wave-X family of products. Wave-X products are capable of attenuating noise from 5 MHz to 40 GHz and come in sheets or can be injection molded or extruded into various shapes.

CST was showing off its Cable Studio and PCB Studio at the show. CST Cable Studio is focused on the analysis of SI, EMC and EMI effects on single wires, twisted pairs or on complex cable harnesses and CST PCB Studio is a tool for the investigation of signal and power integrity and the simulation of EMC and EMI effects on PCBs based on SimLab technology. Both are fully integrated into the CST Design Environment.

CAP Wireless, a supplier of high-performance microwave/RF amplifiers and amplifier-based subsystems, announced the CHPA0618-1 ultra-broadband power amplifier for broadband military platforms within the defense electronics and homeland security industries. The unit incorporates GaAs MMIC technology into CAP’s patented Spatium™ broadband spatial combining architecture to achieve outstanding solid state power levels across the amplifier’s 6-18 GHz frequency range. Their amplifier technology is also used in Giga-tronics’ power amplifiers.

FEKO Suite 5.4 was previewed with new and improved features such as waveguide ports being fully specifiable in CADFEKO, specification of symmetry is fully supported by CADFEKO, MoM/FEM hybrid has been parallelized, waveguide ports can be included in models where PO is used to model electrically large surfaces, infinite general periodic boundary conditions are available, various import and export filters and more.

Laird Technologies gave me a sample of their recyclable clean copper (beryllium-free) EMI shielding fingerstock gaskets. They perform as well as beryllium copper except for slightly higher stress relaxation over time.

Leader Tech was displaying their new RFID specific absorber shielding which is integrated right into the cover material for boards. They provide various gaskets, shielding, absorbers, conductive elastomers and FerriShield ferrites.

LeCroy Corporation, a leading supplier of oscilloscopes and serial data test solutions, announced the launch of its Voyager verification system, the world’s first protocol analyzer exerciser system for testing USB 3.0 devices, systems and software.

muRata was displaying new EMI filter products including surface mount chip ferrite beads, BLM02 and BLM18K series, plus new for automotive applications the block type EMI filter, BNX024/25H series.

Sabritec was showing off their RoHS compliant solderless filter connector technology that provides exceptional low pass filtering and effective insertion loss without the use of soldered components. They have impressive capabilities to integrate diodes and capacitors into their connectors.

I stopped at EMC Solutions Ltd and they showed me their catalog of consultancy, testing and manufacturing including their broad range of filter products.

OPHIR RF showed is broadband power amplifiers including their new model 7008 dual band amplifier with producing 1000/500 W at 1.15 - 1.45 GHz and 2.7 - 3.1 GHz.

Sigrity was showing their advanced solutions for package physical design and for analyzing power and signal integrity in chips, packages and printed circuit boards. I did not know that over 170 companies utilize Sigrity products as part of industry standard design flows with various layout tools.

Vishay displayed their extended family of low profile, high current inductors available in a compact 5.18 X 5.49 mm footprint. It has a high maximum frequency of 5 MHz and low DCR down to 3.6 mohms typical.

Upcoming EMC Events:
The 14th International Exhibition on EMC (2009 China EMC High Technology & Market Development Forum) is June 16-18 in Beijing International Convention Center.

The 2009 IEEE EMC event will be held in Austin, TX August 17-21. We spoke with the publications/marketing chairman, Glen Watkins, and he has big plans for some interesting activities to make the event fun and inviting – so stay tuned. The call for papers has been issued and you can find out more about the event at www.emc2009.org. It should be a great event and Microwave Journal will be there to cover the event again next year.