Electromagnetic Interference Reduction using Electromagnetic Bandgap Structures in Packages, Enclosures, Cavities, and Antennas

Abstract

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is a source of noise problems in electronic devices. The EMI is attributed to coupling between sources of radiation and components placed in the same media such as package or chassis. This coupling can be either through conducting currents or through radiation. The radiation of electromagnetic (EM) fields is supported by surface currents. Thus, minimizing these surface currents is considered a major and critical step to suppress EMI. In this work, we present novel strategies to confine surface currents in different applications including packages, enclosures, cavities, and antennas. The efficiency of present methods of EM noise suppression is limited due to different drawbacks. For example, the traditional use of lossy materials and absorbers suffers from considerable disadvantages including mechanical and thermal reliability leading to limited life time, cost, volume, and weight. In this work, we consider the use of Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) structures. These structures are suitable for suppressing surface currents within a frequency band denoted as the bandgap. Their design is straight forward, they are inexpensive to implement, and they do not suffer from the limitations of the previous methods. A new method of EM noise suppression in enclosures and cavity-backed antennas using mushroom-type EBG structures is introduced. The effectiveness of the EBG as an EMI suppresser is demonstrated using numerical simulations and experimental measurements. To allow integration of EBGs in printed circuit boards and packages, novel miniaturized simple planar EBG structures based on use of high-k dielectric material (r > 100) are proposed. The design consists of meander lines and patches. The inductive meander lines serve to provide current continuity bridges between the capacitive patches. The high-k dielectric material increases the effective capacitive load substantially in comparison to commonly used material with much lower dielectric constant. Meander lines can increase the effective inductive load which pushes down the lower edge of bandgap, thus resulting in a wider bandgap. Simulation results are included to show that the proposed EBG structures provide very wide bandgap (~10GHz) covering the multiple harmonics of of currently available microprocessors and its harmonics. To speed up the design procedure, a model based on combination of lumped elements and transmission lines is proposed. The derived model predicts accurately the starting edge of bandgap. This result is verified with full-wave analysis. Finally, another novel compact wide band mushroom-type EBG structure using magneto-dielectric materials is designed. Numerical simulations show that the proposed EBG structure provides in-phase reflection bandgap which is several times greater than the one obtained from a conventional EBG operating at the same frequency while its cell size is smaller. This type of EBG structure can be used efficiently as a ground plane for low-profile wideband antennas.