Reconstruction of Current Distribution and Termination Impedances of PCB-Traces by Magnetic Near-Field Data and Transmission-Line Theory

Abstract

Various publications have shown methods to reconstruct the current distribution of a wire system, e.g. of a PCB, by the usage of near-field data. Especially, if there is knowledge about the potential current paths, these methods achieve satisfactory results. This publication presents a novel approach to improve the quality of the reconstruction by application of the transmission-line theory. Additionally, also the termination impedances of a PCB trace can be determined by the approach presented in this work. For demonstration, several PCB-like structures are investigated with the introduced methods. The results are discussed and compared to other methods.