EMC analysis including receiver characteristics - pantograph arcing and the instrument landing system

This contribution presents a sophisticated compliance study, whether emissions of transient sparks occurring between pantographs of rails and overhead lines can interfere with receivers of the instrument-landing-systems (ILS) onboard aircraft. Though the investigated interference scenario actually is quite specific and arose in the context of the enhancement of the airport Frankfurt in Germany it comprises several fields of electromagnetic compatibility where yet insufficient approaches exist. In particular, absolute field strength measurements of transient signals in a non-ideal measurement railway environment are conducted. Another new aspect in this study is, that the individual receiver characteristics are taken into account, e.g. non-linearity and band pass behavior, where usually only simple continuous wave signals in an interference path loss model are considered. Consequently, a setup is presented, where an individual measured interference signal from a real environment is synthesized and fed into a real EMC sink. This procedure however, could be generalized to any other receiver or interference source.