A Transfer Function Method to Calculate the Outcome of Radiation Measurements of a Buck Converter

Abstract

Radiation measurements are performed in fully or semi-anechoic chambers or GTEM cells and are usually costly and time-consuming. In addition, most manufacturers of electronic devices do not have the capability to perform such measurements quickly by themselves. The transfer function approach aims at simplifying this problem: once the characteristics of the measurement setup are captured in a transfer function, the conducted characterization of the device under test (DUT) is sufficient to calculate the results of a radiation measurement. This is justified by the assumption that the radiation is mainly generated by the currents on the supply cables and the DUT is small compared to the smallest wavelength considered. Additionally, the DUT should behave linearly. In previous work [2] it was shown that a characterization of the DUT as a Norton equivalent source together with the scattering parameters of the measurement setup are sufficient to calculate the voltage at the received antenna in an anechoic chamber. In this work, the method is applied to a buck converter for both a GTEM cell and a fully-anechoic chamber setup.