Computer-based design tools for EMC

A project has been funded by British Aerospace Dynamics Limited to identify what computer-based design tools are available for ensuring EMC. The emphasis of the work is on assessing what tools are commercially available at present but, since design tools for EMC are far from mature, attention is also given to new developments. The eventual goal of concurrent, front-end tools, presents an ideal against which to benchmark the tools. This paper reviews the methods available for use in computer-based EMC tools, considers the limitations in these methods, and finally lists commercial EMC tools. The emphasis of the paper is not on providing a detailed explanation of the methods, but rather assessing how they can practically be applied to EMC problems. The problem of EMC appears at many levels of design from IC through multi-chip modules (MCMs), PCBs, to subsystems which have shielding and external cables, and systems of interconnected subsystems. The tools can be classified into two categories, those which use mathematical-based methods (analytical and numerical), and those which use knowledge-based (expert) methods