Visualization of Current Distribution on The Printed Circuit Boards

Abstract

This paper proposes a visualizing methodology to the current distributions on a printed circuit board by means of an inverse source approach.
At first, we carry out numerical simulation employing loop current model. As a result, it is revealed that any of the magnetic field components lead to an exact current distribution.
Second, we carry out an experimental verification of our method. However, the most dominant magnetic field component leads to a good current distribution, but minor magnetic components lead to the noisy current distributions.
Finally, the most dominant magnetic fields measured at the both upper and bottom sides of a printed circuit board lead to the fairly good current distributions. In order to extract the common currents between the current distributions independently computed from upper and bottom major magnetic fields are convolved. This leads to an exact current distribution on a printed circuit board.
Thus, we have succeeded in visualizing the current distribution on a printed circuit board.