Materials
ou’re the compliance lead for your company’s latest, newest, fanciest widget, just about to be released to production, with anticipated sales in the millions. The product has an extremely high profit margin and customers from all around the world are waiting in line to make a purchase.
So, what are your next steps? The pressure is on high, full-throttle! The beads of sweat are starting to form on your forehead. What do you do to solve this problem in the shortest amount of time possible? Don’t even think board spin. A board spin this late in the game will take too long and is therefore off the table as a solution.
Luckily for you, you are smart and you’ve already thought through this problem well ahead of time. You had recently obtained sample flexible RF absorber sheets from several reputable vendors and characterized their performance (insertion-loss) following the method described by Ken Wyatt in Reference 1. You have this data neatly tucked away on the network, easy to find and use in case of an emergency just like this.
You look through the data you had collected for these sheets and locate the absorber material that provides the highest attenuation at around 800 MHz. You install the absorber onto the bottom of the PCB, re-test emissions on the product, and find out that you now have 6 dB of margin at 800 MHz. The product ships on time, having passed all required compliance tests! And, to top it off, you’re now considered a big hero too! Management just loves you, and so do your customers. You saved the day. This is awesome!
- “Insertion-loss Measurements of Ferrite Absorber Sheets,” EDN, July 25, 2019.
- “Let’s Talk About Flexible Absorber Sheets,” In Compliance Product Insights, October 2019.
- “What Every Electronics Engineer Needs to Know About: Absorbing Materials,” In Compliance Product Insights, October 2018.