Investigation of internal partitioning in metallic enclosures for EMI control

High clock frequencies and short-edge rates in present high-speed digital systems result in EMI problems at increasingly higher frequencies. At these speeds, clock harmonics have sufficient energy in the range above 500 MHz to excite cavity modes of a conducting enclosure, and to drive even small length slots and apertures that are unavoidable in a practical design, and can result in an EMI problem. One approach to mitigate these problems is to partition the enclosure into several smaller internal shielded compartments. To study the factors which affect this partitioning, a special enclosure that can be divided into two internal compartments using center planes with different types of openings, was designed. The objective is to study the coupling through the center plane for different types and numbers of openings in the center plane and front panel. The experimental results are compared with finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations.