Crosstalk-Based Test Setup Reproducing Radiated Susceptibility Effects in Wire Bundles

In the development of alternative test methods for pre-compliance radiated-susceptibility (RS) investigations, it is proven that a special test setup, involving an additional wire placed in proximity of the cable under test and fed by two radio-frequency generators, can reproduce through crosstalk (XT) the same terminal voltages/currents induced in the standard RS test setup, on condition that those generators are properly controlled in magnitude and phase. Such a test setup does not require expensive facilities like anechoic chambers and powerful amplifiers to feed antennas, therefore it represents a fast and cheap alternative to get feedback on radiated immunity in the early-design stage, before the formal RS assessment carried out according to standards. While in past literature works the equivalence between XT and RS was demonstrated for some simple cables like a single bare wire or a differential pair, this paper presents a new XT-based test setup suitable for the practically relevant case of a complex bundle of dielectric-covered wires. To this aim, two different formulations of feeding conditions are proposed, one more rigorous, based on multiconductor-transmission-line modeling, and one approximate, based on bundle-reduction techniques. The performance of both the equivalence schemes is assessed and discussed in the frequency range between 1 MHz and 1 GHz.