The conference had more than 600 participants from about 30 countries, over 160 papers plus workshops and a large exhibition. The overall impression was that after having online conferences for two years due to the pandemic situation, EMC Europe 2022 was characterized by a large need of discussions in physical meetings. This shows the need for physical meetings in technical and scientific discussions. On a conference, what is said between the sessions can be of at least the same importance than what is said in the presentations of scientific/technical contributions. The poster sessions were crowded the whole session times with a constant flow of questions and discussions.

Workshops

Seven parallel workshop tracks were organised the first conference day. The workshops gained a large interest and in several of the rooms people were standing along the walls.

The workshop themes covered a large variety of areas. Examples of workshop themes were Automotive EMC, Reverberation chambers and test methodologies for wireless 5G Narrowband radio and mmWave applications. One of the workshops had the title “EMC on humans”. High exposure to electromagnetic fields is known to have adverse health effects on humans. Risk assessment in this area is based on two questions; “Which exposure will cause adverse effects in humans?” and “Which levels are we actually exposed to?”. The answers to these questions give guidelines on how to perform a sound risk management. The workshop dealt with these questions and gave an overview of the guidelines from the International commission on non-ionizing radiation protection (ICNIRP), as well as the European directive on the minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to the risks arising from electromagnetic fields.

 

One workshop had the title “EMC Aspects of Electrification of the Society”. The background was the electromagnetic interference issues that are related to the increased electrification of the society. As an example, interference from solar-panels and charging of electrical vehicles might cause problems for wireless services.  Results from interference measurements from solar-panel installations were shown and the risks of interference from charging of electrical vehicles were discussed. How these risks are handled at Swedish airports were also presented.

Oral sessions

The oral sessions gained large interest and were characterized by lots of questions and discussions. The largest area was Computational Electromagnetics and covered three sessions. The following areas covered two sessions each:

• Wireless technologies
• Shielding and filtering
• Reverberation chambers
• Measurements

Special sessions were organized for the themes “Risk-Based EMC” and “Stochastic Methods in EMC”.

Examples of innovative papers

A few examples of papers with innovative findings is given below.

 

Current Distribution in Flat Transparent Antennas

Reuven Zemach1 , Zion Menachem2 , Jacob Assayag1 , Amir Gamliel3 , Motti Haridim4

1 Merchavim Institute of R&D in Negev; 2 Shamoon College of Engineering, Beer Sheva, Israel; 3 Investigations and Intelligence Dept., Israel Police, Jerusalem, Israel; 4 HIT- Holon institute of Technology, Israel

 

In this paper the properties of transparent antennas made of flat Indium Tin Oxide thin films is derived and their properties are analyzed. One example of applications of such antennas might be for windows in cars. The methodology for finding the current distribution along such antennas for different values of the film conductivity is presented. It is shown that decreasing the conductivity of the radiating element leads to transition of the current distribution from cosine to exponential decay.

 

A Practical Approach Based on Machine Learning to Support Signal Integrity Design

 Werner John1 , Julian Withöft2 , Emre Ecik2 , Ralf Brüning3 , Jürgen Götze2

1 PYRAMIDE2525/TU Dortmund, Paderborn – Germany; 2 TU Dortmund/Information Processing Lab; 3 EMC Technology Center Paderborn Zuken GmbH

 

In this paper the possibility of using AI-based methods in PCB design is presented. A PCB design system enhanced with AI/ML moduules can support the optimal use of microelectronic components in the development process. To do this, the PCB and circuit designer must be provided with AI-based suggestions for SI-compliant interconnection of components in the early design phase. AI-based modules can also serve as a reference for engineers working in the selection of interconnect structures in the pre-, concurrent-, and post-layout analysis phases but having little or no experience with signal integrity (SI). This paper shows from a practical point of view how to create ML modules for SI analysis. Selected ML modules (k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) + Neural Network (NN – Keras) + Support Vector Regression (SVR)) for predicting design relevant SI parameters for PCB subnetworks are presented.

 

Board-Level Hardware Trojan Detection Using on-Chip Touch Sensor

Masahiro Kinugawa1 , Yuichi Hayashi2

1 The University of Fukuchiyama, Fukuchiyama, Japan; 2 Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Japan

 

There have been reports of threats that cause electromagnetic information leakage by inserting Hardware Trojans (HT) into the signal traces around components on the printed circuit board (PCB). In this threat, the HT insertion is assumed not only at the manufacturing stage but also during the in-transit or in the field after shipment, and the threat may extend to devices that are not considered to be threatened by HT insertion implemented inside conventional ICs. This paper discusses the detection method for the HT insertion, which is implementable on a PCB without external measurement equipment. Additionally, we validate the method in more practical situations, detecting the HT on populated PCBs. The method employs an on-chip touch sensor to measure the changes in electrical characteristics caused by HT insertion.

Best paper awards

Best paper awards were given in the two categories “Regular paper” and “Student paper”. The winner in the category Regular was:

 

Accelerated Modal Network Synthesis for Arbitrary Interconnection Structures Through a Model-Order Reduction by a Static-Mode Extraction

 

Authored by: Hannes Schreiber and Marco Leone
Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany

 

The winner in the category Student was:

 

Switching Current Modeling Based on Register Transfer Level Logic Simulation for Power Side-channel Attack Prediction

 

Authored by: Masaki Himuro, Kengo Iokibe and Yoshitaka Toyota

The Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

 

 

Peter Stenumgaard

EMC Editor, Electronic Environment