Predicting shielding effectiveness of populated enclosures using absorption cross section of PCBs

Shielding effectiveness (SE) is an important measure of how well an enclosure reduces the electromagnetic (EM) field incident upon it. Commonly, when the shielding effectiveness of an enclosure is stated it is for the case when the enclosure is empty. Including contents such as printed circuit boards (PCBs) in the enclosure will affect the shielding effectiveness as the PCB absorbs EM energy. One technique of determining how much energy a PCB absorbs is to measure its absorption cross section (ACS) using a reverberation chamber (RC). The measured ACS can be used to predict the shielding effectiveness of an enclosure when the PCB is inside it using power balance techniques. In this paper the ACS of a number of PCBs are measured both individually and in closely stacked groups. This information is then used to show how the ACS can be used to calculate shielding effectiveness and the results are compared to direct measurement of the SE of the enclosure containing a PCB. Knowledge of the ACS of typical or particular PCBs could be used by engineers to estimate the real shielding effectiveness of an enclosure with contents, when designing electronic systems.