Abstract
In this paper, the effects of electromagnetic interference (EMI) coupled to a radio-frequency (RF) communication channel by resonant mechanisms are investigated and described in the framework of Shannon information theory in terms of an equivalent channel capacity loss so that to analyze and compare the effects of non-modulated and random Spread Spectrum (SS) modulated EMI. The analysis reveals a higher EMI-induced capacity loss for SS-modulated compared to non modulated EMI under practical values of the quality factor Q, while a modest improvement in the worst case capacity loss is observed only for impractical values of Q. Simulations on a 4-quadrature amplitude modulation (4-QAM) digital link featuring Turbo coding under EMI resonant coupling reveal that SS-modulated EMI gives rise to higher bit error rate (BER) at lower EMI power compared non-modulated EMI in the presence of resonant coupling for practical values of Q, thus suggesting a worse interfering potential of SS-modulated EMI.
Highlights
Due to the widespread diffusion of highly integrated information and communication technology (ICT) systems like smartphones, tablets and intelligent sensor nodes, digital communication modules operate in a more and more harsh electromagnetic environment, in which electromagnetic interference (EMI) from digital integrated circuits (ICs) and switching mode power converters can be coupled to the nominal signal path via the silicon substrate, the IC package and the power distribution network of ICs and printed circuit boards (PCBs), resulting in a degraded bit error rate (BER) and possibly in a complete communication failure [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The effects of EMI coupled to a communication channel by narrowband resonant mechanisms have been investigated in terms of an equivalent channel capacity loss
The effects of non-modulated and random SS-modulated EMI under different resonant frequency and quality factors of the EMI coupling mechanism have been compared, extending the analysis presented in [37], which was limited to the case of wideband EMI coupling
Summary
Due to the widespread diffusion of highly integrated information and communication technology (ICT) systems like smartphones, tablets and intelligent sensor nodes, digital communication modules operate in a more and more harsh electromagnetic environment, in which electromagnetic interference (EMI) from digital integrated circuits (ICs) and switching mode power converters can be coupled to the nominal signal path via the silicon substrate, the IC package and the power distribution network of ICs and printed circuit boards (PCBs), resulting in a degraded bit error rate (BER) and possibly in a complete communication failure [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Spread-Spectrum (SS) techniques, which consist in the modulation of the frequency of switching signals around the nominal value, so that to spread their spectral energy over a wider bandwidth [17,18], are often adopted in clock oscillators [19,20,21,22,23] and DC–DC converter controllers [24,25,26,27] since they give rise to a significant (10–20 dB) reduction of EMI spectral peaks measured following EMC standards [8,9,10,11] and make it possible to meet EMC requirements at low cost. Coupled power channel fB,max f (Hz) channel non-modulated wideband coupling non-modulated resonant coupling f (Hz)
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