Leakage electric field analysis of a guided wave NEMP simulator

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) simulators are used to simulate the intense electromagnetic fields generated during a high altitude nuclear burst and in turn they are used for the hardening assurance of critical electronic systems. The guided wave (GW) NEMP simulator is like a transmission line, fed by a steep fronted high voltage pulse and terminated by a resistor on the other side. The resistive termination absorbs only the low frequencies of the pulse, while the high frequencies escape out from the simulator thereby acting as a high frequency radiator. These high frequency radiations could be a source of interference to the nearby sensitive installations, and hence it becomes imperative to study the leakage field radiation pattern of an NEMP simulator so that the direction and the intensity of the maximum radiated field can be ascertained. This study will be useful during the planning, and the commissioning of an NEMP simulator near critical infrastructures or adding a new critical infrastructure near an existing NEMP simulator. In this paper the leakage fields and their radiation pattern computed using Method of Moments (MoM) code and same has been validated by measurement results.