December 2025

When your circuit misbehaves with unexplained noise and jitter, you're facing electromagnetic coupling. This practical guide walks engineers through identifying whether problems stem from differential or common mode issues, near-field or far-field effects, and provides a systematic debugging workflow to isolate sources, paths, and receivers—getting your design back on track.

As hospitals fill with wireless devices—from patient monitors to smartphones—radio frequency interference threatens medical device performance and patient safety. This article explores the critical testing methodologies, regulatory requirements, and risk management strategies manufacturers need to ensure their wireless medical devices work reliably in today's crowded spectrum environments.

Understanding how shields perform in the near field requires accounting for wave impedance differences between electric and magnetic sources. This sixth installment derives shielding effectiveness formulas for near-field conditions and reveals a surprising truth: copper outperforms steel at low frequencies, but steel's superior absorption reverses this advantage above 4kHz.

Secondary discharges during Field-Induced CDM testing aren't just measurement anomalies—they're real stress events caused by mechanical bouncing of the pogo pin. This groundbreaking investigation reveals how contact vibrations trigger unintended zaps with opposite polarity, provides electrical proof of the mechanism, and offers practical solutions to prevent this hidden reliability threat.