Simulation tools for EMC

The effect on EMC of design decisions needs to be assessed as early as possible and reviewed as soon as more information becomes available. Traditionally, this has been done by the EMC/electronics engineer manually assessing the design against a list of EMC requirements. Often this just consists of a PCB checklist. These design requirements are limited in their generality and do not take into account the complex interactions occuring in a complete system. It is therefore desirable to use computer-aided design and analysis tools which take account of electromagnetic phenomena in a more thorough fashion. Methods used by these EMC design and analysis tools and their limitations are reviewed