INVESTIGATION OF TECHNIQUES FOR REDUCING UNINTENTIONAL ELECTROMAGNETIC EMISSIONS FROM ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS

ii This dissertation describes three independent studies related to techniques for reducing unintentional electromagnetic emissions from electronic circuits and systems. The topics covered are: low-inductance multi-layer ceramic capacitor for high frequency circuit board decoupling, the application of imbalance difference model to various circuit board and cable geometries, and balanced cable interface for reducing common-mode currents from power inverter. The first chapter discusses the importance and the meaning of the connection inductance associated with MLCCs and analyzes the effect of plate orientation in MLCCs. It demonstrates that vertically oriented plates have no more or less inductance than horizontally oriented plates when the overall dimensions of the plate stack are similar. Decoupling capacitance options at the various levels of a high-speed circuit is investigated to determine the range of frequencies that decoupling at each level is likely to be is effective. Innovative low-inductance capacitive-stem capacitor configurations ar