Digital and Analogue Hardware Design of an On-Board EMI Detector

The conceptual design of an EMI detector based on a pair of transmission lines sending inverted data has been presented previously. This paper focuses on the actual hardware design of such an EMI detector. The prototype of the EMI detector is implemented using both analogue and digital hardware designs. In the analogue design, the EMI detector detects the presence by processing the signal at the receiver end directly using analogue electronic components. In the digital design, the EMI detector uses an analogue to digital converter (ADC) to convert the voltage signal from the receiver end into its digital form. This voltage is further processed using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which generates a warning when EMI is present. This paper compares the operation and performance of both designs of the EMI detector in a harsh electromagnetic (EM) environment.