Los Angeles Chapter of the EMC Society
Advances in Antenna Testing for Aerospace Applications: A Colloquium and Exhibition
Monday, September 15st 2008
The Program
This program was designed to bring the latest technology related to RF and antenna measurement techniques to the local community. Experts in the industry will share practical information on various topics in an extended presentation format. This allows a thorough discussion of each topic and provides the opportunity for extended questions and answers. The “hands-on” quality of the presentation enables the registrant to learn useful information that can be used on the job – in the “real world.”
The Exhibition & Reception
There will be an exhibition by vendors of antenna, test and measurement related products and services in a ballroom neighboring the technical presentation area. These products and services address the needs of the commercial, military, and aerospace industries. During the reception from 4:15 to 5:00 pm in the exhibit area, heavy appetizers and a hosted bar will be available. AMTA and IEEE members are welcome to attend the reception only at NO CHARGE provided a registration form is completed and sent in advance. A badge will be available for the reception only attendees upon arrival at 4:15 pm. Thus, if you can’t join us for the entire day, drop by for the reception and exhibition to network with AMTA and IEEE. You can see demonstrations, meet the speakers, and you might even win a raffle prize!
Thursday, June 21st 2007
Top Ten EMC Problems and Troubleshooting Techniques
Kenneth Wyatt
Because time-to-market and budget factors often drive many of today's high-tech designs, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues often surface at the last moment in the design cycle, potentially delaying product introductions. Very often, simple pre-compliance evaluation and troubleshooting techniques can identify issues early when the cost of implementation is substantially lower and design improvements may be made with less impact on schedules. This seminar covers some of the top EMC problems the speaker has noted through his years as an experienced EMC engineer, plus, a number of simple tools and evaluation techniques useful in characterizing designs at various stages of development and will better prepare products for EMC qualification. As a bonus, a low-cost EMC troubleshooting kit will be demonstrated.
Thursday, March 15th 2007
0.1 Horsepower and 0 to 5 GHz in 50 Picoseconds: The Challenges in Delivering Power to Tomorrow's Microelectronics
David Hockanson
The continued increase in power and speed requirements of microprocessors and other ASICs presents new challenges for delivering power. While power integrity often brings images to mind of in-depth decoupling schemes, resistance and inductance also play an increasingly significant role. Besides the concern of efficiency in the power distribution system (PDS), resistance must be controlled to ensure the compensation circuitry of the voltage regulator can adequately maintain the voltage within specified limits. Parasitic inductance limits the ability to draw current from various locations in the PDS, resulting in the need not only for choosing the values of decoupling capacitors, but also for judiciously placing the capacitors so they can be effective. This presentation will facilitate a discussion of the various parts of the PDS, and how decisions can be made to ensure the smooth operation of power delivery. After the complete power distribution system is discussed, a brief discussion on how various parts may play a role in EMI will follow if time allows.
Tuesday, October 17th 2006
New Paradigms for Efficient Spectrum Utilization and President's State of the EMC Society
Andrew Drozd
New approaches for enhancing spectrum utilization and frequency management for large, complex systems have recently been investigated. These approaches enable the effective and efficient joint utilization of all orthogonal electromagnetic (EM) transmission resources, including, but not limited to time, frequency, geographic space, modulation/code, and polarization. This multi-dimensional environment is hereafter referred to as the Transmission cyperspace (TH), a term intended to convey the notion of a multi-dimensional resource space (with n degrees of freedom expressed as an n-tuple) in which each dimension allows orthogonality amongst users. The challenges to the modeling and solution of large-scale TH-based problems are presented in the context of assigning the n-tuple dimensions in near real time. Also described are the key aspects of the multidimensional Transmission Hyperspace and approaches for efficient spectrum management, the results of which are expected to garner several orders of magnitude improvement in RF resource utilization and therefore, aggregate information throughput.
June 2006
Los Angeles EMCS Chapter Summer Social
Come and help us plan the upcoming year! We want and need your help in putting together our Speakers and Topics “Wishlist” We are here to serve the needs of the Los Angeles Area EMC Engineers, their Employers and Friends of the EMC Society. Non-member guests are always welcome! Be social, have a good time and help your EMC Education needs!!
Thursday, May 18th 2006
RAYTRACK: a "Five-Ray" Scattering Program for Antenna, Multipath, and Radar Cross Section Simulations
Mr. Louis H. Sacks (The Aerospace Corporation)
At The Aerospace Corporation, Mr. Sacks performs RF-scattering simulations that involve large and complex structures. A representative sampling includes gain, pattern, tolerance, and radiation hazard simulations of large reflector antennas, mu ltipath s imulations for antennas mounted on spacecraft, and radar cross section simulations of aircraft. Commercial computer programs that employ full-wave analysis techniques such as Physical Optics (PO), Method of Moments (MOM), or Finite Element Analysis (FEA) are suitable for ana lyzing complex objects but their slow speed limits their ability to model electrically large structures. To overcome this limitation, Mr. Sacks turned to ray theory to run his simulations. Using the Uniform Geometrical Theory of Diffraction, he developed an algorithm that—with five rays—predicts scattering from a rectangular facet of any size. Since these facets can be very large (a solar panel requires just one facet; a paraboloid many)—their use for scattering simulations results in a significant reduction in both setup and run times. And, because the five-ray algorithm works in the near and far field and in the diffraction and shadow regions, it can be applied to all three scattering categories— antennas, multipath, and radar cross sections. The five-ray algorithm provides amplitude, phase, and polarization values and can be quickly and effectively applied to even the most complex scattering problems. Mr. Sacks wrote the RAYTRACK program to exploit the five-ray algorithm’s simplicity and versatility. For this presentation, Mr. Sacks will describe RAYTRACK’s five-ray formulation and provide examples of scattering simulations that he performed at Aerospace.
Thursday, April 20th 2006
Demystifying Grounding
Shirish Shah
Everyone recognizes that grounding is an important aspect of any electronics system. However, the performance requirement of each system is unique and therefore, the gro unding techniques have to be adjusted accordingly. This may make the job of grounding design quite challenging and quite often there is disagreement amongst designers and EMC engineers as to the right approach in a specific design. Shirish will present various grounding considerations and approaches for different designs. He will also explain, with examples, the reasons for the different approaches.
Thursday, February 16th 2006
Short-Term Earthquake Forecasting: Is there an Electromagnetic Connection?
Tom Bleier
The recent devastating earthquake in Kashmir and tsunami in the Indian Ocean has brought home the fact that earthquakes are one of the most deadly natural disasters, and the ability to predict them has not progressed as fast as we would like. Natural disasters like hurricanes and floods can be predicted with reasonable accuracy, aided by detailed satellite imagery and sophisticated computer models. Even tornadoes give some warning using modern Doppler radar. However, earthquakes have seemed to defy the goal of accurate short-term forecasting.
Most researchers have been concentrating on more “mechanical” areas e.g. seismic activity, “gaps” in quake occurrence on selected fault segments, seismic wave propagation changes, minute crustal movement rate changes (using GPS), and basic surface stain monitoring. These seem to work on time scales of decades.
Is there another phenomenon that we may have overlooked? Is there some other type of “signal” that might occur based on the physics of the earthquake rupture zone? There is an increasing number of international researchers who have started monitoring electromagnetic (EM) phenomena in the Earth’s crust and ionosphere, at first based on anecdotal sightings of strange phenomena, and more recently using more sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment, both on the ground, and in space. These monitored signals are starting to show promise in providing useful warnings of imminent quakes.
Mr. Bleier will discuss the state-of-the-art in EM monitoring of large earthquakes. He will provide examples of signals detected by his company, QuakeFinder, using a network of 70 ground magnetometer stations in California, and a 10 lb. nanosatellite (QuakeSat-I) launched in June 2003. He will also comment on recent progress by others in the international research community.
Wednesday, November 2nd 2005
The "Hidden Schematic" in High Performance Circuits
William Kimmel Speaks
As processor speeds continue to increase, signal integrity and especially impedance control, has become a big part of EMI design in printed circuit boards. The textbook tells you what to do, but doesn't adequately discuss things that usually go wrong. We call these parasitic factors the "Hidden Schematic" - the stray inductance, capacitance and impedance discontinuities that prevent the circuit from performing as intended as well as increasing emissions. This paper discusses the hidden schematic - the parameters that don't show up in the real schematic, and how to cope with them.
Monday, September 26th 2005
AEROSPACE EMC
A Colloquium and Exhibition
A practical seminar designed to improve your efficiency as a test engineer and product designer, where you'll learn troubleshooting tips and strategies from the experts in order to improve your EMC engineering skills.
- Ray Adams
- Zhong Chen
- Bruce Harlacher
- Ken Javor
- Steve Jensen
Thursday, June 16th 2005
Interference in Communication Systems on Multi-Emitter Platforms
The economics of the rising demand of information has made it increasingly attractive to place a large number of emitters and recievers on a single tower or vehicle. Suppressing interface between all possible combinations of these radios has stretched the limits of EMI control, and has made careful system modeling and planning more vital than ever. This presentation will outline mechanisms and models used to predict the close-range EMI between systems located on the same platform. Various alternatives for interference mitigation will be discussed.
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