August 11, 2011 -- Automotive electronic systems are particularly sensitive to the electromagnetic emission profiles of the chips and printed circuit boards supplied by vendors. As a result, SAE (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers) has developed and continually refines specifications for testing and establishing conformance to electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) requirements. Very-near-field EM scanning technology allows vendor design teams to quantify and immediately display spatial and spectral emissions profiles with a tabletop system and avoid issues in later, more costly testing at the module, system, or complete vehicle level.

This article looks at a couple of examples that shows the value of this testing. The first example compares the emission profiles of a new chip feature, Spread Spectrum Clock Generation (SSCG), one scan with the feature "Off," the other with SSCG turned "On." In the second example, the design team compared a second-generation half-duplex SerDes (serializer/deserializer) system with a third-generation full-duplex design. The results verified next-generation features, documented the benefits, accelerated customer time-to-market, and created a positive impact in customer documentation.

By Ruska Patton. (Patton is the Director of Product Management for .)