EMC Bench Notes

Ken Wyatt explores a more advanced troubleshooting tool for assessing radiated emission issues, the RF current probe. These are most useful for measuring RF common mode harmonic currents on cables.

Most engineers are familiar with near-field probes and that they are sensitive to E- or H-fields emanating from circuit boards, cables or enclosure seams. They are really the first order of business when evaluating a circuit board or system.

Let's use the basic tools and spectrum analyzer setup described in the last two months and use them to characterize an actual embedded processor board based on the Arduino design.