Application Areas: Development, Testing, and Production of PCB's

Development In the development environment the ETSi4334 is used to evaluate the EMC characteristics of prototype boards prior to formal compliance testing. Emission 'hot-spots' are highlighted so that tracks and components in need of suppression can be identified. The effectiveness of suppression measures can be evaluated by re-scanning and comparing with the original result. The immunity performance of a prototype board can also be evaluated by injecting noise into cables or even individual tracks and mapping the coupling that takes place. Using this information designers can apply effective suppression to protect vulnerable components and circuits.
Testing If problem frequencies are encountered during OATS testing the ETSi4334 can be used to identify the components and tracks which are responsible for emissions at that frequency. Remedial measures can be applied and their effectiveness assessed quickly and accurately before returning to the OATS. Having achieved compliance the board and its cables can be scanned and the results saved as the reference compliant configuration for later comparison with production units.
Production Once the compliant product enters production the ETSi4334 can be used to help ensure that compliance is maintained throughout the production life of the product. The ETSi4334 can be set up to automatically step through a number of scans of the PCB and its cables. The readings are compared to the saved results from a known compliant configuration, giving a final Pass/Fail result at the end. A sample of the production PCBs can be tested in this way, as can those with minor modifications or component changes.