Experimental investigation of noise immunity diagnosis for printed circuit boards by bulk current injection test

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 PCBs susceptible to the common-mode noise. This proposed method was validated experimentally using four PCBs with the same circuit but different trace designs. It was observed that the noise immunity of PCBs had a good correlation with the values of these grading indices.