Short Pulse Measurements by Field Sensors with Arbitrary Frequency Response

A calibration procedure for the characterization of E-field sensors is presented. It is based on the use of a simple structure for the generation of a known field distribution, the TEM-horn cell: in particular, the unwanted effects of the cell open termination are removed by a proper time domain gating of the sensor response. The achieved sensor transfer function (amplitude and phase) allows the measurement of very fast transient field (e.g. radiated fields from an electrostatic discharge) through the application of a simple deconvolution procedure to the sensor output voltage time history. The proposed method is applied to a resonant dipole to demonstrate the possibility of measuring transient fields by employing whatever type of receiving structure, even with a complicated frequency behavior. Finally, the comparisons with theoretical field values and with the measurements, obtained by a commercially available active probe, are presented to validate the method.