In this paper, penetration phenomenon of an early-time (E1) high altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) into dispersive underground multilayer structures is analyzed using electromagnetic modeling of wave propagation in frequency dependent lossy media. The electromagnetic pulse is dealt with in the power spectrum ranging from 100kHz to the 100MHz band, considering the fact that the power spectrum of the E1 HEMP rapidly decreases 30dB below its maximum value beyond the 100MHz band. In addition, the propagation channel consisting of several dielectric materials is modeled with the dispersive relative permittivity of each medium. Based on source and channel models, the propagation phenomenon is analyzed in the frequency and time domains. The attenuation levels at a 100m underground point are observed to be about 15 and 20dB at 100kHz and 1MHz, respectively, and the peak level of the penetrating electric field is found 5.6kV/m. To ensure the causality of the result, we utilize the Hilbert transform.

As the track becomes narrower, the effects of track edge become more significant. These effects, such as the amplitude reduction, variations in the shape of the isolated pulse, the partial erasure and the amplitude asymmetry, are dependent on head/disk combination and the off-track position. These relationships are discussed in detail in this paper. More importantly, an off-track model is proposed to study the off-track BER performance for the head with narrow track width. The BER performances of EPRML channel for different off-track cases and different head/media combinations are studied based on this model. Simulation results have proved that this model is a useful tool for simulation of system performance.