EE845: Electromagnetic Compatibility

and Interference (EMC/EMI)

Course Code: EE-845
Semester: Fall 2016
Credit Hours: 3+0
Prerequisite Codes: EE-201 Electromagnetic field theory (3+0),
EE-342 Microwave Engineering (3+1)
Instructor: Dr. Nosherwan Shoaib
Office: 2nd floor, RIMMS
E-mail: nosherwan.shoaib@seecs.edu.pk

EMC/EMI

Last Lecture
Signal Spectra
Spectra of Digital Waveforms
The Spectrum of Trapezoidal (Clock) Waveforms

EMC/EMI

Todays Lecture
Signal Spectra
Spectra of Digital Waveforms
Spectral Bounds for Trapezoidal Waveforms

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Spectral Bounds for Trapezoidal Waveforms

Helpful in understanding the impact of risetime, falltime, and pulsewidth on the
spectrum of the waveform
Recall:

Frequency-domain representation of a square wave (i.e. for a trapezoidal pulse

train with zero rise/falltime); The two sided magnitude spectrum

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Spectral Bounds for Trapezoidal Waveforms

The (sin x)/x function:

Bounds on the (sin x)/x function

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Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

For trapezoidal pulse train with rise- and falltimes equal, the magnitude envelope
will be:

Recall that the dc term or level is A/T

For spectral bound for this spectrum, we have to take logarithm of the expression
above

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Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

The composite plot is the sum of three plots:

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Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

The composite asymptote thus consists of three straight-line segments
The first is due to plot 1 and has a slope of 0 dB/decade and a starting level of 2A/T

The second segment has a slope of -20 dB/decade and is due to plot 2
The third segment has a slope of -40 dB/decade and is due to the sum of plots 2 and 3

Bounds on the one-sided magnitude spectrum of a trapezoidal pulse train.

It is evident that the pulsewidth must be greater than or equal to the pulse rise/falltime: r
EMC/EMI

Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

The high-frequency content of a trapezoidal pulse train is due primarily to the
rise/falltime of the pulse
Pulses having small rise/falltimes will have larger high-frequency spectral content
than will pulses having larger rise/falltimes
Thus, in order to reduce the high-frequency spectrum in order to reduce the
emissions of a product, increase the rise/falltimes of the clock and/or data
pulses

Fast (short) rise/falltimes are the primary contributors to the high-frequency

spectral content of the signal and therefore the products inability to meet the
governmental regulatory requirements on radiated and conducted emissions

EMC/EMI

Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

Example:

The time-domain

waveform and associated

spectrum for a 1-V, 10MHz trapezoidal pulse
train having a
50% duty cycle and
rise/falltimes of 20 ns:

The 11th harmonic (110

MHz) is increased from
68.0 to 86.1 dBV

It illustrates the
importance in using
pulses with as large a
rise/falltime as possible!

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Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

The segment breakpoints
occur at f1 and f3, and it is
desired to determine the
reduction in dB from the dc
level at the frequencies f2
and f4. The various
reductions are:
The spectral bounds for a trapezoidal pulse train

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Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

Example:
Illustrating the effect of rise/falltimes and
repetition rate on the spectral content of 1V, 50%-duty-cycle trapezoidal pulse trains;
(a) 10 MHz, r=f= 20 ns; (b) 10 MHz, r=f=
5 ns; (c) 1 MHz, r=f= 20 ns
Determine the level at 110 MHz

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Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

Example:
Illustrating the effect of rise/falltimes and
repetition rate on the spectral content of 1V, 50%-duty-cycle trapezoidal pulse trains;
(a) 10 MHz, r=f= 20 ns; (b) 10 MHz, r=f=
5 ns; (c) 1 MHz, r=f= 20 ns
Determine the level at 110 MHz

Case a: Level @ 110 MHz = 78.45 dBV

Case b: Level @ 110 MHz = 90.5 dBV
Case c: Level @ 110 MHz = 58.4 dBV

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Effect of Rise/Falltime on Spectral Content

Example:
Case c: Level @ 110 MHz = 58.4 dBV
This is a reduction of 7858 or 20 dB over the 10 MHz, 20 ns pulse train
So, reducing the fundamental frequency also reduces the high-frequency spectral
content

Ordinarily we do not have the option of changing the fundamental (clock)

frequency of the design

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Bandwidth of Digital Waveforms

It is clear from the Fourier series that in order to completely reconstruct a
time-domain waveform from its spectral content, we must sum an infinite
number of harmonics

Clearly, this is not practical !!!

If we continue to add spectral harmonics to the sum, the resulting time-domain
waveform gets closer to the actual complete waveform
Gibbs phenomenon, which occurs at points in a waveform that are
discontinuous such as the rising and falling edges of a square wave. The ideal
square wave has zero rise/falltimes, and continually adding harmonics will not
result in convergence to ideal waveforms at these abrupt discontinuities

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Bandwidth of Digital Waveforms

The important question is how many of the harmonics must we add in order to
reconstruct a waveform that is in some fashion a reasonable approximation to
the actual time-domain waveform?

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Bandwidth of Digital Waveforms

A fundamental property of the Fourier series and the way the coefficients are
computed is that this choice of the coefficients will minimize the integral
squared error (ISE) between the actual waveform and the approximate one using
the first N coefficients
The integral squared error is

where the finite N-term expansion is denoted as

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Bandwidth of Digital Waveforms

Perhaps the best we can do is to include the
harmonics up to a point, truncate
the sum, and see how well the reconstructed
function matches the actual waveform
Above the second breakpoint, 1/r, the harmonics
drop off at a rate of -40 dB/decade. Hence if we
remove spectral components above this, the timedomain waveform would probably not be sufficiently
distorted from the actual waveform

To be conservative we might choose a point, say, 3

times this second breakpoint or 3/r. But this is

Bounds on the one-sided magnitude

spectrum of a trapezoidal pulse train.

approximately 1/r. Hence we might choose as the

bandwidth of this digital clock signal:

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Bandwidth of Digital Waveforms

Typically the lower frequencies of the spectrum affect the level of the pulse, while the higher
frequencies affect the sharp edges
Eliminating the high-frequency components of the spectrum tends to roll off the sharp edges and
hence affect the representation of the pulse transition regions

Reconstruction of a 5-V, 100-MHz, 1-ns rise/falltime, 50%-duty-cycle trapezoidal pulse train: (a) using first 10 harmonics, and (b) using first 5 harmonics

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Bandwidth of Digital Waveforms

The average power in the waveform assuming a 50% duty cycle and r=f

Substituting V = 5 V, r= 1 ns, T = 10 ns gives a total average power in the

waveform of 11.667 W
The Fourier coefficients for the first 10 harmonics are:

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Bandwidth of Digital Waveforms

The average power in the truncated series can be written as:

Hence the average power in the truncated series is 99.97% of the total average
power in the periodic waveform
In the alternative criterion of bandwidth, BW= 0.5/r, the average power in this
truncated sum consisting of 5 harmonics is 11.648 W or 99.84% of the total

In both cases, the truncated series contains virtually all the average power in the
complete waveform, so that looking at the average power contained in the
truncated series is not a satisfactory criterion for judging its ability to reproduce
the waveform and hence the bandwidth
In fact, for this waveform, 96% of the total average power of the waveform is
contained in the dc term and the first harmonic
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Effect of Repetition Rate and Duty Cycle

Illustration of the effect of duty cycle on the spectral bounds of trapezoidal pulse trains

Reducing the duty cycle (the pulsewidth) reduces the low-frequency spectral

content of the waveform, but does not affect the high-frequency content
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Reading Assignment (Assignment # 03)

Q 1. Demonstrate the understanding of effect of ringing (undershoot/overshoot) on
the spectral content of a waveform.
Q 2. Demonstrate the understanding of use of spectral bounds in computing bounds
on the output spectrum of a linear system.

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