Fast analysis of electromagnetic field coupling into PCBs based on the PEEC Method

Coupling from external transmitters such as antennas into printed circuit boards (PCBs) is of particular concern for actual EMC issues. Regarding this topic, a new method based on the partial element equivalent circuit approach (PEEC) is presented in order to model the coupling from a homogeneous electric field into a system of conductors in the presence of substrate. The PEEC approach is an integral equation approach and is chosen because it allows to consider high frequency problems from a circuit point of view. The main advantage of the new method is that the substrate needs not to be discretized meaning only the metallic conductors above the substrate create unknowns. The comparison of a calculated example with a measurement of a real PCB board shows that the approximations that were made lead to sufficient accuracy. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the method needs much less computational effort than a full-wave model.