Experimental Characterization of the Response of an Electrical and Communication Raceway to IEMI

This paper reports the results of two experimental campaigns aimed at studying the high-frequency response of a raceway containing low voltage power, telephone, and Ethernet cables, to external electromagnetic field illumination. The raceway was tested against HPEM transients inside a gigahertz transverse electromagnetic (GTEM) cell and low-power fields inside a reverberation chamber (RC). The high-power electromagnetic (HPEM) tests revealed that the low-voltage power cables have the greatest coupling under a hyperband illumination, compared to telephone and Ethernet cables. The RC tests allowed the determination of statistical transfer functions from random incident field configurations into DM voltage in cable loads. The responses were found to be governed by the raceway under test at the lower frequencies (below 1 GHz). Between 0.2 and 1 GHz, the raceway gives about 10 dB higher coupling than a short patch cable. The difference is even greater at lower frequencies and for shielded cables. In the frequency band 1-3 GHz, little difference was observed between short patch cables and the full raceway, but both were still significantly higher than direct coupling to the measurement card. Beyond 3 GHz, the coupling is clearly dominated by the terminal equipment. The experiments performed in this paper provide a better understanding of the expected induced voltages and currents in commercial cable systems when exposed to intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI)-like signals.