Is this an oxymoron? I sometimes wish we had a GTEM, but our anechoic screen room has just started to be used for pre-compliance testing and troubleshooting. The workstation consists of a Braden CFC (3000 cu.ft Compact Ferrite Chamber), AR FM2000 isotropic probe, AR 1Kw log periodic, AR 25W1000M7 amp, HP 8648B, HP 8564E, Rhode & Schwarz ESCS30 and a PC w/labview /HP applications. With this rig we can perform both RF emissions pre-scan, troubleshooting and susceptibility up to the host level.
For PCB's alone I suggest an EMSCAN or an EPS 3000 tablet based scanner. The EMSCAN rather sucked because of repeatability, but the EPS 3000 might be much better because it couples a CCD imager with the RF scanner to provide visual grids of the PCB's spatial profile. Problem is, with either you still need a screen room to prevent ambients from washing out your data. And then you have to wrangle with hosts, card extenders, cable toss, etc.. At the time, the EMSCAN was less than $50K and I don't know how much the EPS 3000 is going for. The CFC approach came in at around $400K or so (I built the turntable for it to $ave) but the bottom line is this work is always expensive in both hardware and headcount. It depends on how far you need to go and how badly management wants it... Kyle Ehler [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Assistant Design Engineer LSI Logic --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
