Worst-case EMC investigation of single-wire transmission lines based on taylor arithmetic

Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) investigations often involve the assessment of whether signal integrity (SI) and radiated susceptibility (RS) in transmission lines comply with design margins and/or maximum levels provided by EMC regulations. Hence, worst-case analysis is a useful tool to flag potential problems in the early design stage. This paper presents a novel paradigm for the worst-case SI/RS analysis of single-wire transmission lines. The method is based on the theoretical framework of Taylor arithmetic, which represents each variable as a Taylor expansion, function of the selected design parameter, complemented by an interval remainder that encompasses all approximation and round-off errors in a conservative way. A suitable modification of the basic algebraic and nonlinear operations allows propagating this representation from the input design parameter to the desired outputs. The methodology is applied to the SI analysis of a coaxial cable with uncertain shield radius, and to the RS assessment of a wire illuminated by an impinging plane wave with uncertain polarization.