The partial element equivalent circuit method : modeling and experimental verification of PCB structures

Abstract: To help products comply with international Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC)regulations or as a help in a design process numerical simulation of electromagnetic (EM) characteristics are a valuable tool. With the development of high-speed computers the complexity of EM simulation programs and the systems they can simulate has increased considerable. But still, problems must be partitioned due to computer resource and/or EM simulation technique limitations. In this thesis, four different EM simulation techniques are described and the nature of these are discussed. The focus is on the partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) method for which the following improvements and investigations have been proposed in the enclosed papers. First, a recent proposed formulation for the direct simulation of the radiated electric field from a device is compared against traditional post-processing equations and measurements. The results show that the proposed direct method, the electric field sensor, is unreliable for arbitrarily implementations since the length of the sensor strongly affects the results. Second, a technique to obtain simplified PEEC models are presented. The first step is to use a discretisation procedure where partial elements with small effect on the complete PEEC model are excluded. Then, instead of using numerical integration, closed-form equations are used to calculate the partial elements. The obtained simplified PEEC models are shown to comply well against measurements. Third, an introductory paper to the PEEC method is presented. The international interest for the method has been gaining rapidly for the past years resulting in considerable progress for the technique. But, in the Nordic countries the research effort has been low. The paper presents the technique using simple antenna examples, both printed and free space, and illustrations. For verification, simulations have been compared against analytical solutions and measurements.