Approximate Transmission-Line Model for Field-to-Wire Coupling in Arbitrarily Routed Wiring Structures Above Ground

In this article, a comprehensive method for parametric representation of wire trajectories, allowing accurate geometric description of complex and arbitrarily oriented wire bundles, is introduced. This is the starting point to develop a computationally efficient numerical transmission-line (TL) model for predicting the radiated susceptibility of arbitrarily oriented bundles of wires, illuminated by (possibly) nonuniform electromagnetic fields. The proposed method foresees solution of the field-to-wire coupling problem through suitable discretization and sampling of the bundle geometry and the incident electromagnetic field. Differently from previous models, where bundles parallel to ground were assumed, the proposed model allows for arbitrary bundle orientation by exploiting, first, exact projection of the external field onto the bundle direction, and second, evaluation of the actual wire length (instead of the longitudinal one) of each TL section. Accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed method are assessed versus full-wave simulation for two application examples, involving parabola-shaped and trefoil knot-shaped wiring structures above ground. Although the strong nonuniformity affecting these structures forces TL theory to work very close to its limits, the achieved agreement is satisfactory and the significant reduction of computational times makes the proposed method suitable for approximate yet efficient prediction of radiated susceptibility characteristics of complex wire bundles.