Electrical Characteristics of a Modal Filter With a Passive Conductor in the Reference Plane Cutout

A wider range of operating frequencies, lower supply voltage levels, and increased circuit density of radio-electronic equipment (REE) increase its susceptibility to electromagnetic interferences. Elements of REE are becoming more sensitive to electromagnetic environment especially to ultra-short pulses (USPs) penetrating through front door or back door channels. There is a large variety of noise suppressing devices, but their construction characteristics lead to limited efficiency. Modal filters (MFs), which are based on modal distortion, protect REE from USPs. In this article, the authors present the results of the study of a new method for implementing a MF with a passive conductor in a reference plane cutout and propose two prototypes of the MF with strong and weak couplings. The article presents the results of full-scale and computational experiments in time and frequency domains. For the first time, the decomposition of a USP in the proposed MF configurations is experimentally shown. Besides, we experimentally demonstrated the arrival of additional pulses, the time of which is determined by a linear combination of per-unit-length delays multiplied by the line length. Thus, the proposed approach allows implementing a simple and inexpensive technique for protection against USPs in multilayer printed circuit boards.