Electromagnetic Interference to Flight Navigation and Communication Systems: New Strategies in the Age of Wireless

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) promises to be an ever-evolving concern for flight electronic systems. This paper introduces EMI and identifies its impact upon civil aviation radio systems. New wireless services, like mobile phones, text messaging, email, web browsing, radio frequency identification (RFID), and mobile audio/video services are now being introduced into passenger airplanes. FCC and FAA rules governing the use of mobile phones and other portable electronic devices (PEDs) on board airplanes are presented along with a perspective of how these rules are now being rewritten to better facilitate in-flight wireless services. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of NASA cooperative research with the FAA, RTCA, airlines and universities to obtain laboratory radiated emission data for numerous PED types, aircraft radio frequency (RF) coupling measurements, estimated aircraft radio interference thresholds, and direct-effects EMI testing. These elements are combined together to provide high-confidence answers regarding the EMI potential of new wireless products being used on passenger airplanes. This paper presents a vision for harmonizing new wireless services with aeronautical radio services by detecting, assessing, controlling and mitigating the effects of EMI

A throughput Fast Measurement Method for Two-Antenna Equipped Wireless MIMO Terminals

According to the Third Generation Partnership Project Specification, a Period of 8-12.8 H is Required to Evaluate the Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) Performance of a Wireless Terminal for a Single Frequency Point and Channel Model Combination. the Following Article Proposes a Semi-Simulation, Semi-Measurement-Based MIMO throughput Modeling Scheme Which Can Reduce the 8-12.8-H Measurement Time to 40-60 Min, Corresponding to More Than a Ten Times Improvement of the Test Efficiency, Without Loss of the Test Accuracy

Ensuring Electromagnetic Compatibility in Nuclear Power Plant beyond Equipment Qualification Tests

Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is defined as the capability of equipment or system to function satisfactorily in its electromagnetic environment without introducing intolerable electromagnetic disturbances to anything in that same environment [1]. EMC regulatory requirements for instrumentation and control (I&C) equipment were not developed or in effect until the last few years. Therefore, there is a considerable number of plant equipment that has not been qualified for EMC. The current EMC regulatory requirements address new and modified equipment only, and do not call for testing of existing equipment. There is a gap, which has to be overcome, in order to understand the current level of EMC within the plant. Equipment qualification normally implies formal tests in EMC chambers, which is not practical for the equipment already installed. This paper is a short overview of the preparation phase of a project that includes various EMC-related activities currently being performed in Krško nuclear power plant (NPP). The activities are categorized into two main groups: equipment immunity (susceptibility) tests, used as an assessment of the immunity of the existing equipment such as process cabinets, transmitters and similar, and zone mapping measurements, which are performed to record the electromagnetic environment of the selected plant areas. There is no clear, detailed and unambiguous guidance on how to perform any of these tests. It takes a lot of engineering judgement to optimize them for a specific plant. Some of the most important questions addressed in this paper are 1) the selection of the plant areas for zone mapping measurements and susceptible equipment to be tested for immunity, 2) choice of electromagnetic disturbances, which shall be simulated during those tests, and 3) practical performance, i.e. harmonization of immunity tests with operation of other plant systems. It is necessary to decide which operation mode poses the “worst-case”, i.e. how and when the immunity tests and zone mapping measurement should be performed. The paper also addresses troubleshooting of poor EMC design and installation practices, which can significantly reduce the number of EMC-related problems in a plant

Measurement techniques enhancements for MIMO 4G mobile communication systems. extension of mode stirred reverberation chambers (MSRCs) emulation capabilities

[ENG] Mobile communications have experienced a brutal raise over the past 15 years. What started as a voice communication system (GSM or 2G) has finished yet as a data communication system of any kind, which in some cases has come to replace the conventional cabled data access infrastructure. This change in the use given to mobile devices necessarily entails a change in the underlying technology, which should be capable to provide the transmission speeds that these new applications require. This has emerged in recent years an increasing interest in multiple antenna techniques, usually referred as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques, as they increase the spectral efficiency (and thus the transmission rate for a given bandwidth) of wireless systems. In this thesis, some of the factors limiting the ideal advantages of these multiantenna techniques are studied, in order to quantify the differences between the ideal behavior of 4G devices and behavior that users will experience in actual use conditions. The effect that the user has on the final performance of the devices is one of the main limitations that these devices are in daily use. Mobile phones are used almost all the time in the vicinity of the user, causing a decrease in the richness of the multipath electromagnetic environment (and thus a reduction of the MIMO benefits). As a result of this reduction, the number of signal paths that reach the user is also reduced. In this thesis both factors (user influence and influence of the number of signal paths) will be studied both for passive devices (antenna prototypes) and active devices (commercial phones). The second part of this thesis consist on the study of how to transfer some of these factors reducing the isotropicity of the environment, to one of the most promising measurement techniques, as it is the mode-stirred reverberation chamber (MSRC). This technique emulates naturally an isotropic rich multipath environment with the signal strength following a Rayleigh distribution. However, in this thesis two new techniques are proposed that allow the emulation of less isotropic environments without altering the basic operating principle of the MSRC. [SPA] Las comunicaciones móviles han experimentado un aumento brutal en los últimos 15 años. Lo que comenzó como un sistema de comunicación de voz (GSM o 2G) ha terminado todavía como un sistema de comunicación de datos de cualquier tipo, que en algunos casos ha llegado a sustituir la infraestructura de cableado convencional de acceso a datos. Este cambio en el uso que se da a los dispositivos móviles implica necesariamente un cambio en la tecnología subyacente, que debe ser capaz de proporcionar las velocidades de transmisión que estas nuevas aplicaciones requieren. Esto se ha convertido en los últimos años un creciente interés en las técnicas de múltiples antenas, normalmente se conoce como técnicas de múltiple entrada y múltiple salida (MIMO), ya que aumentan la eficiencia espectral (y por lo tanto la velocidad de transmisión para un ancho de banda dado) de los sistemas inalámbricos. En esta tesis, algunos de los factores que limitan las ventajas ideales de estas técnicas de múltiples antenas son estudiados, con el fin de cuantificar las diferencias entre el comportamiento ideal de dispositivos 4G y comportamiento que los usuarios experimentarán en condiciones reales de uso. El efecto que el usuario tiene sobre el rendimiento final de los dispositivos es una de las principales limitaciones que estos dispositivos son de uso diario. Los teléfonos móviles se utilizan en casi todo el tiempo en la proximidad del usuario, causando una disminución en la riqueza del entorno electromagnético trayectos múltiples (y por tanto una reducción de los beneficios MIMO). Como resultado de esta reducción, el número de trayectorias de señal que llegan al usuario también se reduce. En esta tesis ambos factores (la influencia del usuario y la influencia del número de caminos de señal) se estudió tanto para dispositivos pasivos (prototipos de antenas) y los dispositivos activos (los teléfonos comerciales). La segunda parte de esta tesis consisten en el estudio de cómo transferir algunos de estos factores que reducen la isotropicity del medio ambiente, a una de las técnicas de medición más prometedores, como es la cámara de agitación de modos (MSRC). Esta técnica emula naturalmente un entorno isotrópico multipath rico con la intensidad de la señal después de una distribución de Rayleigh. Sin embargo, en esta tesis, dos nuevas técnicas que se proponen permitir la emulación de entornos isotrópicos menos sin alterar el principio de funcionamiento básico del MSRC.Universidad Politécnica de Cartagen

Tecniche di protezione da interferenze elettromagnetiche: modellistica e prove sperimentali in camera riverberante

Electromagnetic interference and compatibility are problems that claim an increasing attention in many environments, all over the world

Investigation into a GPS time pulse radiator for testing time-stamp accuracy of a radio telescope

The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa is required to tag the arrival time of a signal to within 10 ns of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The telescope has a local atomic clock ensemble and uses satellite based remote clock comparison techniques to compare the telescope time to UTC. The master clock timing edge is distributed to each telescope antenna via an optical fibre precise time transfer. Although the timing accuracy of the telescope time was measured internally by the telescope, there is a need for an independent method to verify how well each antenna and its associated processing stages are aligned to UTC. A portable GNSS time-pulse radiator (GTR) device for testing the time-stamp accuracy was developed. The GTR was calibrated at the National Metrology Institute of South Africa and laboratory characterisation tests measured its RF timing pulse to be 1.32 ± 0.100 µs ahead of the UTC second. The telescope’s time and frequency reference clock ensemble consists of two hydrogen masers, an ultrastable crystal and GPS disciplined Rubidium clocks. During operation, the GTR radiates a broadband GPS time synchronised RF timing signal at a known distance from the telescope antennas and the corresponding timestamps were compared to the expected value. Recent GTR timing tests performed on one of the MeerKAT antennas showed that the telescope’s generated timestamps associated with the GTR’s RF timing signal coincided with the expected delay of approximately 16 ± 0.1 µs measured from an antenna 4.8 km away from the telescope’s master clock transmitter. Ultimately we used the GTR to verify that the telescope time and UTC were aligned to within 100 ns. Future work is planned to improve the profile of the transmitted signal and timing critical hardware in order to reduce the GTR’s error budget

Spatial Characteristics of Distortion Radiated from Antenna Arrays with Transceiver Nonlinearities

The distortion from massive MIMO (multiple-input--multiple-output) base stations with nonlinear amplifiers is studied and its radiation pattern is derived. The distortion is analyzed both in-band and out-of-band. By using an orthogonal Hermite representation of the amplified signal, the spatial cross-correlation matrix of the nonlinear distortion is obtained. It shows that, if the input signal to the amplifiers has a dominant beam, the distortion is beamformed in the same way as that beam. When there are multiple beams without any one being dominant, it is shown that the distortion is practically isotropic. The derived theory is useful to predict how the nonlinear distortion will behave, to analyze the out-of-band radiation, to do reciprocity calibration, and to schedule users in the frequency plane to minimize the effect of in-band distortion