Abstract
In recent years, PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) are widely employed to work out the compact as well as lightweight electrical devices. However, inspection of their regularity is not so simple because of their complex electric circuit structures. One of the non-destructive tests to do that is to measure in the vicinity the electromagnetic fields essentially accompanying with their operation. Estimating the field sources from the measured fields becomes useful and important information not only for checking up their regularity but also for the EMC/EMI problems. According to this background, we are motivated to propose the current viewer, which makes it possible to visualize the current distributions in PCBs.
Previously, we have proposed the current viewer in order to visualize the current distribution on planar electric circuits. Operation principle of this current viewer is based on those of modified Rogowski coil method. The mechanical structure of this viewer is that the sensor solenoid coils does not cover all the circumferences of the target current carrying conductor, but covers a semicircle. In this paper, we propose the vector current viewer by combining two current viewers in orthogonal way, Our vector current viewer is capable of visualizing the magnitude as well as direction of target current along with the Lissajous diagram methodology.
