IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 52, NO. 3, AUGUST 2010 629 Block Analysis of a Voltage Supply Chain: Mixed Electromagnetic Modeling and Validation Roberto Ferrauto, Francesco De Paulis, Member, IEEE, Ernesto Ippoliti, Franco Vasarelli, Ulisse Di Marcantonio, Antonio Orlandi, Fellow, IEEE, and Giulio Antonini, Senior Member, IEEE Abstract—This paper describes an industry-oriented approach for the analysis of complex electronic systems. The typical con- strains of an industry design flow such as limited time, limited computing resources, and the use of standard/commercial soft- ware tools are considered. The approach consists in partitioning the system in several functional blocks and studying each block separately. Different numerical techniques are employed, choos- ing the more appropriate, for characterizing each chain blocks. At the end, all the blocks are cascaded obtaining the overall system performances. The approach is applied to a voltage supply chain mounted on board of the SENTINEL 1-SAR satellite to verify the integrity of the voltage pulse propagating from the source to the high power amplifiers. The final results are validated by hardware measurements. Index Terms—Numerical simulations, power delivery network, satellite, signal integrity, supply chain. I. INTRODUCTION T ODAY, the trends of industry-driven processes are toward the reduction of the time to market when starting the design of a new product. A key issue in this process is the capability to predict not only the functional behavior of the system but also its performance in the presence of induced or self-generated noise. This prediction must happen even before the construction of the first prototype and it is entrusted to the electromagnetic modeling. The complex electronic systems cannot be modeled all at once [1]. This is either due to reasons related to the lim- ited computational resources and/or because these systems can present parts (or blocks) of different electrical nature: lumped circuit, distributed circuit as transmission lines, 3-D assembly, etc. The only feasible approach applicable into an industry de- sign flow is the so-called “best-in-class” approach: each part of the system is simulated and numerically tested by using the best Manuscript received July 15, 2009; revised January 16, 2010 and February 25, 2010; accepted March 1, 2010. Date of publication April 1, 2010; date of current version August 18, 2010. R. Ferrauto is with the Altran Italia S.p.A., 00185 Rome, Italy (e-mail: Roberto.Ferrauto@altran.it). F. De Paulis, A. Orlandi, and G. Antonini are with the UAq EMC Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of L’Aquila, I-67040 L’Aquila, Italy (e-mail: francesco.depaulis@univaq.it; antonio.orlandi@ univaq.it; giulio.antonini@univaq.it). E. Ippoliti, F. Vasarelli, and U. Di Marcantonio are with the Thales Alenia Space Italy, I-67041 L’Aquila, Italy (e-mail: franco.vasarelli@thalesaleniaspace.com; ernesto.ippoliti@thalesaleniaspace. com; ulisse.dimarcantonio@thalesaleniaspace.com). Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TEMC.2010.2044885 technique to predict the required performances. These simula- tion techniques can be different (circuit based, behavioral based, 3-D full-wave based, etc.) and carried out in different domains (time and/or frequency). Then, the simulation of the complete system should be carried out together gathering each single component. This partitioning approach allows an easy identifi- cation of the blocks responsible for any specification violation. Hence, a more easy and quick solution of the problem can be found and implemented. Another constrain to take into account is that this analysis should be carried out by using commercial software tools available in the design flow. This requirement has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are related to the general high quality of these tools in terms of memory and CPU resource management; the disadvantages are associated to their low flexibility in exchange data toward other tools. The aim of this paper is the description of a systematic approach that fulfills all the previous requirements and constraints for the electromagnetic modeling of a complex system. Different tech- niques are chosen according to the characteristics of each single block building the whole system. This systematic procedure is summarized in the flow diagram of Fig. 1(a). The system is partitioned in N blocks [2]–[4]; an electromag- netic analysis is carried out for each block by using the most suitable technique; the results, in terms of ports variables (scat- tering parameters (S-parameters), impedance/admittance matri- ces, etc.), are then cascaded to obtain the sought output. The proposed procedure is applied to the voltage supply chain of a high power amplifier (HPA) mounted on the board of the SENTINEL 1-SAR satellite. A supply voltage pulse is driven through this chain from the source to the amplifiers where the pulse enables the transmitting stage. Any variation of this sup- ply voltage pulse (magnitude, waveshape, time skew) can have a significant impact on the overall system performances. In fact, in satellite applications, any physical device should be reliably designed not only for the stringent specifications and standards, but also for the impossibility of performing any regular main- tenance of the system. In this paper, the integrity of the voltage pulse propagating from the voltage source to the input stage of the HPA, which is activated by the pulse itself, is analyzed by applying the proposed approach. The structure of this paper is the following: Section II de- scribes the physical blocks that build up the supply chain. Sec- tion III describes the characteristics of the input voltage signal and Section IV reports the relevant details of the circuit and full-wave modeling of the previously introduced blocks. In this section, the fulfillment of the block models to the passivity and causality conditions are also discussed. Section V describes the 0018-9375/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE