Virtual Signal Integrity Test on Shielded/Unshielded Twisted-Wire Pairs in Reverberation Chambers Under Realistic Industrial Constraints

Abstract

A recent method able to perform “virtual” signal integrity test on twisted-wire pairs (shielded or not) using a bulk current injection setup is, in a first part, extended successfully to the case of reverberation chamber tests in order to deal with a higher frequency range. The method, allowing in postprocessing to superimpose the effect of the measured disturbance (calculated from <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S</i> -parameter measurements) to a useful signal generated numerically, is proven to be independent of the measurement conditions (position of the antenna, reverberation chambers quality factor, for instance) and is able to easily consider the electromagnetic field uncertainty occurring in such facility. In a second part, the method is improved through the use of full-wave numerical simulations in order to deal with realistic industrial constraints. The method can therefore be applied on twisted wire pairs of any length and connected to frequency-dependent termination loads of any values. The method allows to predict accurately (up to 2 GHz in this article) the signal integrity of any communication protocol and could help industrials to decide if a shielded version is necessary or not. An example of bit-error-rate prediction is finally done on a 100BASE-T1 fast Ethernet protocol signal on two shielded/unshielded twisted wire pairs.