Reduction Characteristics of FM-Band Cross-Talks between Two Parallel Signal Traces on Printed Circuit Boards for Vehicles

Abstract

It is well known that electromagnetic disturbances in vehicle-mounted radios are mainly caused by conducted noise currents flowing through wiring-harnesses from vehicle-mounted printed circuit boards (PCBs) with common ground patterns with slits. To suppress the noise current outflows from the PCBs of this kind, we previously measured noise current outflows from simple two-layer PCBs having two parallel signal traces and different ground patterns with/without slits, which revealed that making slits with open ends on the ground patterns in parallel with the traces can reduce the conducted noise currents. In the present study, with the FDTD simulation, we investigated reduction characteristics of the FM-band cross-talk noise levels between two parallel signal traces for eighteen PCBs, which have different ground patterns with/without slits parallel to the traces and dielectric layers with different thickness. As a result, we found that the cross-talk reduction effect due to slits is obtained by 3.6-5.3dB, while the cross-talks between signal traces are reduced in inverse proportion to the square of the dielectric-layer thickness and in proportion to the square of the trace interval and, which can quantitatively be explained from an inductive coupling theory.