Electromagnetic noise in electric circuits: Ringing and resonance phenomena in the common mode

Abstract

It is generally believed that electromagnetic noise originates from the coupling of electric signals in a circuit with electric signals in surrounding materials in the environment. However, the noise phenomenon had not been quantified until now. In order to study the phenomenon of noise, we considered a standard circuit (two transmission lines), to which an additional transmission line was introduced in order to explicitly take into account the effect of conductors in the environment. We performed calculations using a newly developed multiconductor transmission-line theory for the resulting three-line circuit in order to determine the magnitude of the coupling between the circuit and the conductors in the environment under various conditions. We observed ringing and resonance phenomena in the common mode, which influenced the performance of the normal mode as electromagnetic noise. Our findings were confirmed by recent experiments in which conductor lines were arranged in various ways using a printed circuit board (PCB). The ordinary usage of electricity in the standard electric circuit was found to be worst in exciting the common mode noise.