A Prediction Method of Common-Mode Excitation on a Printed Circuit Board Having a Signal Trace near the Ground Edge

摘要

Common-mode excitation caused by an imperfect ground plane on a printed circuit board (PCB) has been conventionally explained with the 'current driven' scheme, in which the common-mode current is driven by the ground voltage across the unintentional inductance of the ground plane. We have developed an alternative method for estimating common-mode excitation that is driven by the difference of the common-mode voltages for two connected transmission lines. A parameter called current division factor (CDF) that represents the degree of imbalance of a transmission line explains the common-mode voltage. In this paper, we calculate the CDF with two-dimensional (2-D) static electric field analysis by using the boundary element method (BEM) for asymmetric transmission lines with an arbitrary cross-section. The proposed 2-D method requires less time than three-dimensional simulations. The EMI increase due to a signal line being close to the edge of the ground pattern was evaluated through CDF calculation. The estimated increase agreed well—within 2 dB—with the measured one.