Use of evolution strategy in identifying the worst case effects of ultrashort pulse propagation in PCB bus of spacecraft autonomous navigation system

The paper highlights the importance of using evolution strategy (ES) in investigating ultrashort pulse peak voltages in multiconductor structures of printed circuit boards (PCB). Trapezoidal ultrashort pulse propagation along the conductors of a real PCB multiconductor bus was simulated and, with ES, the whole ultrashort pulse duration was optimized using the criterion of peak voltage maximization in the PCB bus in order to identify the worst-case effects. The ES optimization was launched 10 times with different initial solutions (IS) - 3 ns, 300 ps, 30 ps. It is shown that changing the IS does not influence the optimization results. The voltage maximum exceeding the signal amplitude at the input by 20% and the crosstalk maximum exceeding that of the steady state level in the active conductor by 14% are detected and localized.