Common-mode (CM) radiation from a cable attached to a conducting enclosure has a typical dipole-type antenna structure, in which an equivalent noise voltage source located at the connector excites the attached cable against the enclosure to produce radiated emissions. Based on this mechanism, a simple method for predicting the CM radiation from the cable/enclosure structure was proposed. The method combines an equivalent dipole approximation with sinusoidal current distribution and CM current measurement at a specified location on the cable. Its validity was examined in comparison with the far-field measurement and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) modeling. The predicted resonance frequencies and CM radiation levels were validated with engineering accuracy, i.e., within 30 MHz and 6 dB, respectively, from the measured and FDTD-modeled results in the frequencies above 150 MHz.

A simple method for diagnosing noise immunity of printed circuit boards (PCBs) by the bulk current injection (BCI) test was proposed, which can contribute to the PCB trace designs for common-mode noise. A grading index, which is defined as the ratio of the stray capacitances with and without critical IC of malfunction, was introduced to distinguish the PCB susceptible to the common-mode noise. This proposed method was validated experimentally using four PCBs with the same circuit but different trace design. It was observed that the noise immunity of PCBs had a good correlation with the values of these grading indices.