by MontrosePosted on Posted in The Future of Engineering — No Comments ↓

Compliance includes more than just product safety and EMC.  It  may include software protocols or installation requirements unique to a fixed location or be country specific.  Will reliability engineering become a subset of compliance or vice-versa?  A small group of engineering specialists must now achieve compliance for countries individually because mutual recognition agreements do not exist between certain parties, yet.  Is there enough manpower and bandwidth to even get the job done with regard to the numerous requirements that seem to increase yearly sometimes on a county by county basis?  

We must  be comfortable with requirement related to wireless communication protocols, RoHS, WEEE, REACH, Energy Star, ETSI, PTCRB, MIL-Standard, and many other directives and mandates identified by acronyms we may know little about or have never heard of.  A European Directive may be created for products that do not yet exist but are anticipated in the future.  Some countries around the world in the past  have never concerned themselves with EMC or product safety, but are now entering the compliance arena, with some mandating in-country testing since no MRA exist between the United States, Europe, and their country’s legal authorities. 

Regulatory standards may evolve into something more complex in the future with new requirements covering a greater scope upon issuance of the next version.  Will our work in the future focus on component approval or only system level.  Does it even matter as long as the intent of achieving regulatory requirements is met?  With this thought…..

  • What type of products will require compliance; components or only end user systems?
  • Is it even possible to perform testing on small assemblies that are integrated into another system which would cause a significant change in compliance, such as a wireless card adapter being incorporated into different host systems?
  • Should we be concerned more with radiated emissions in a broadband wireless environment, or immunity to ensure functional operation when an external RF event that includes surge and ESD occurs?

 

by MontrosePosted on Posted in EMC Topics — No Comments ↓

Many electronic products generate electromagnetic interference (EMI).  Digital devices may emit undesired RF that could interfere with the operation of other electrical devices and systems located within close proximity.  Mixed signal components (digital and analog) are both used on printed circuit boards.  Hardware engineers are generally more concerned with functionality to meet a marketing specification than regulatory compliance.  After all compliance is someone else’s job.  In addition, software engineers must also be knowledgeable in functional safety as it relates to unintended operation due to an external transient event such as surge or ESD.  For this reason, many programmers have no idea about how to write code for functional safety or that a need actually exist.  We therefore have a disconnect between those involved in code development and EMC compliance.  EMC, safety, hardware design and software engineers all have different skill sets.  In many companies, everyone operates largely independent of each other.  

Years ago, most regulatory compliance engineers wore two hats on a full-time basis; safety and EMC, a tough job to have.  Today, both safety and EMC engineers now specialize in a niche area of engineering.  They may not be well versed in various aspects of someone else’s job description.  Companies without an integrated compliance department, including validation and test engineering, may not be aware of the increased risk associated with integration of hardware, software and firmware.  The European EMC Directive does not address electro/mechanical product safety.  What could happen if an EMI transient event entered a product causing a life safety issue?  Would the unit have the ability, upon malfunction, to notify the operator or user that a fault condition occurred?  

EMC engineers should be educated in Hazard Based Safety Engineering (HBSE) principles, which addresses functional safety along with hazard and risk assessments.  In addition, software engineers must also be trained to recognize foreseeable effects of EMI disturbance that may occur and generate code that places the device into a safe mode of operation under any fault condition.  EMC, safety, hardware design, programmers and validation engineers must work together to determine the severity of a hazard, the magnitude of risk and probability of an event that could cause an electrical shock hazard, mechanical injury or other functional harm.  

by MontrosePosted on Posted in The Future of Engineering — No Comments ↓

Most of the time we only think about our daily work depending on what we do either academic research, teaching or applied engineering.  Insufficient time is given to thinking about the future of engineering and society, especially products and services that will make not only our lives richer, but that of humanity.  Every few months a new product is released that allows us greater access to content, namely wireless technology using hand-held devices.  What about larger systems of systems and the infrastructure to support them?  Engineers in the future must provide significant impact by minimizing worldwide energy consumption while developing new products.  One of the most important engineering challenges in the future lies in energy creation, distribution and utilization.  There is a voracious appetite for electricity required for survival in a complex, interdisciplinary and multicultural world.  Different cultures view advances in electrical engineering with either awe such as those in third world countries, or with a shrug as if, so what’s new, does it make my life easier and more fun, and can I afford it?  We must ensure that there is sufficient electrical power to sustain life on this planet and the need to conserve this precious resource through advances in system design using sound engineering principles.  This is best achieved by designing circuits, systems, and power supplies that manage electrical networks in an efficient and cost effective manner on a large scale.  If we do not perform due diligence as EMC engineers, we could be a contributor to a potential shortage of electrical power since we are able to produce only so much electricity.  Without new power energy efficient plants coming online that are environmentally safe and renewable, where are we going to get the electricity to sustain our life style and the ability to recharge our hand-held products, not to mention the lights in our house, our entertainment systems and appliances and everything else that uses electricity?  Electrical supply and demand is a challenge for all engineers to think about not only today, but for our future.  

by MontrosePosted on Posted in EMC Topics, The Future of Engineering — No Comments ↓

We attempt to ensure products comply with regulatory requirements, both safety and EMC.  With regard to EMC, compliance engineers always seek an elusive 3 dB margin, yet if we are a few dBs over the specification limit does this mean the product is a hazard to other electrical products and the environment that it is used within.  Should it be prevented from being placed on the market regardless of what measurement uncertainty values are?  Regulatory authorities, or those having jurisdiction, could take time at great expense to prosecute companies for non-compliance.  Therefore, should design engineers focus on meeting a marketing specification “Designing to Meet“, or ensure electromagnetic compatibility and product safety by “Designing to Comply“?  This means the product will function and survive in an environment that may be outside of anticipated use and survive for its’ intended life cycle.  

With technological advances, our focus as EMC engineers must be to ensure products are designed to survive high levels of immunity protection and to maintain reliability and quality of performance.  What may happen when everyone with a hand phone containing multiple wireless features (e.g., GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) operate at the same time in one location?  Is undesired EMI from many intentional radiators operating on nearly the same frequency now become a concern according to a [generic] regulatory standard and test specification?  However, if a strong RF signal from a high-power transmitter occurs nearby, all other devices could become non-functional or we incur loss of data.  With this scenario, we should not worry about “radiated” EMI from many devices sharing a large spectral bandwidth of frequencies at the same time, but “preventing EMI energy from causing harm to critical systems”.  For example, medical products must be robust against high intensity RF fields in a hospital environment.  Transportation systems must be 100% reliable when traveling anywhere in the world.  In the future, EMC engineers must ensure products operate in an RF rich broadband wireless world but not be disrupted from RF energy in the environment.  Therefore, EMC engineers must ensure compliance and not just focus on achieving that elusive 3 dB margin, which is essentially designing to meet.  

by MontrosePosted on Posted in Printed Circuit Board Design, The Future of Engineering — No Comments ↓

In the future, there will be a point to where the number of active and passive components that can be physically mounted onto a PCB will exceed the available real-estate of assembly.  When this occurs the PCB must increase in size or have features removed, unless we go to stacked assemblies with some form of interconnect between boards.  To think about where the future of PCB technology could end up, we can expect the following to become a routine process during development and production. Most PCBs with any level of high technology will be multi-layer using very thing laminates, expensive core material plus various grades of copper depending on roughness and frequency range of operation.

  • Discrete active components will be embedded internal to the assembly.  Embedding active devices minimizes loop inductance and allows for more real estate on both top and bottom for components and interconnects that cannot be embedded.
  • Discrete passives, such as resistors (Ohmega layer), capacitors and inductors will also be embedded along with buried capacitive layers to ensure a high quality power distribution network.
  • Transmission lines may end up being fiber optic and not traditional copper.  Fiber optic transmission lines are made by placing glass beads in a trench routed out within a core layer during manufacturing and then melted into a fiber optic interconnect.
  • Three dimensional components will be used with higher number of I/O pins and greater power consumption known as System on Package (SoP).
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