Abstract: The radiation emission (RE) of multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) will cause electromagnetic compatibility problem. An efficient numerical method for evaluating the effectiveness of decoupling capacitors in reducing RE from power ground (P/G) planes in PCB was presented. A two-dimensional boundary-element method (BEM) was used to establish the radiation model. Then, the RE was calculated by equivalent magnetic current of edge field around P/G planes. Furthermore, the radiation and input impedance of P/G planes mounted decoupling capacitors were calculated for frequency up to 5 GHz. The results were compared to those of the case without decoupling capacitors. It shows that the decoupling capacitors can effectively decrease RE except for anti-resonant frequency. At higher frequencies, the decoupling effectiveness mainly depends on the parasitic inductance of capacitor pin rather than the value.

Key words: printed circuit board, radiation emission, decoupling capacitors, boundary-element method, equivalent magnetic current