On the Modeling of ELF Electric Fields for Space Mission Equipment

Abstract

The majority of the space missions carry measuring instruments that are sensitive to electric fields and require stringent electromagnetic cleanliness. Therefore, the time variations of electric fields produced from spacecraft equipment have to be characterized, measured, and modeled. In this paper, a novel methodology is proposed, employing equivalent dipole modeling to describe the extremely low frequency (ELF) electric field spectral dependence. Each spectral component of the measured field is considered isolated and produced by one electric dipole. An iteration of this process over the whole frequency range yields the complete ELF model of the equipment under test, which consists of one electric dipole per frequency. In order to validate the accuracy of the proposed methodology, various ELF signals in different distances are studied.