1144 PIERS Proceedings, Marrakesh, MOROCCO, March 20–23, 2011

Comparison of Different Methods for Measurement of Shielding

Fabrics Properties
Z. Szabó
Department of Theoretical and Experimental Electrical Engineering
Brno University of Technology, Kolejnı́ 2906/4, Brno 612 00, Czech Republic

Abstract— Shielding is a very popular method of ensuring of electromagnetic compatibility and

for protecting of electronic and electrical equipment and humans against radiated electromagnetic
energy. The suitable alternative to the classical shielding materials can be special shielding-
fabrics. The main advantages of these fabrics are their low weight, flexibility and their easy
processability. The knowledge of shielding effects of different types of material represents a
basic prerequisite for further development and implementation of shielding devices. Measuring of
shielding and absorption properties of fabric materials is relatively difficult. There were developed
many measurement methods that are used in various laboratories to solve these problems. A lot of
producers who develop this type of fabrics are searching for relatively simple, not time-consuming
and reliable measurement methods for shielding and absorption properties measurement which
operate in a wide frequency range. This paper presents a comparison results from two different
methods for measurement of shielding and absorption properties of shielding fabrics.

1. INTRODUCTION
Shielding is a very popular method to ensure the electromagnetic compatibility, protection of elec-
tronic equipments and human beings against radiated electromagnetic energy. Decrease of radiation
disturbances and increase of immunity to electromagnetic fields is obtained with grounded shield-
ing eventually in combination with other suppression components. The shielding is also used to
isolate some places from the external source of electromagnetic interference or to prevent radiation
electromagnetic disturbance from the internal shielded source. There were used metallic materials
with well known electromagnetic qualities for the shielding.
There are more and more used plastic materials for shielding with a conductive coating or with
embedded conductors which ensure the shielding flexibility. Recently the researchers attention is
focused on even lighter and more flexible materials which are fabrics coated with absorptive film.
These materials due to their flexibility and low cost price are promising candidates for instruments
and human protection against unwanted electromagnetic radiation effect.
Measuring shielding and absorption qualities of fabrics and plastic materials is relatively difficult.
There were developed many measuring methods that are used in various laboratories to solve these
problems. A lot of producers who develop this type of fabrics are searching for relatively simple,
not time-consuming and reliable measuring methods to measure shielding and absorption properties
which operate in a wide frequency range.
2. ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE ABSORBTION
Attenuation of the electromagnetic energy may be characterised by the shielding effectiveness,
SE and the insertion loss IL. The ability of a shield to screen out electromagnetic fields has been
quantitatively defined in MIL-STD-285 (June 25, 1956) [1] as an attenuation or the ratio (expressed
in dB) of electromagnetic field strengths E0 /E1 measured without and with the tested material
when it separates field source and receptor respectively:
E0
SEdB = 20 · log [dB] (1)
E1
where E0 and E1 are the electric field strength without and with the shield in position, respectively.
Also it can be explained as the ratio of transmitted power (pt ) to incident power (pi ) measured in
decibels (dB) as follows:
pt
SEdB = 10 · log [dB] (2)
pi
Alternatively magnetic field strength can be used. It is also known that electric and magnetic field
measurements give different results because they depend not only on material performance but also
on the wave impedance.
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Marrakesh, Morocco, Mar. 20–23, 2011 1145

The known methods of measuring the shielding effectiveness of materials are all based on the
definition above, no matter which technique is used to generate incident fields or to measure trans-
mitted fields.
Shielding effectiveness measurement results of a practical enclosure are largely influenced by the
shape of the enclosure, incidence of the fields and by the functional apertures. Nevertheless, the
knowledge of the enclosure material performance is the point of departure for the shielding design.
More recently, other methods have been introduced that use coaxial transmission lines support-
ing TEM mode propagation: the sample is placed as a shunt across the line and in this way it is
exposed to a guided plane wave. Ffor this reason they are also called plane wave measurement
methods. Also, using transmission lines instead of antennas makes the simulation of near field,
electric and magnetic possible. This method makes the use of two TEM cells coupled with an
aperture and will be discussed in the rest of this paper [2, 4].
2.1. Coaxial Holder Method
The SE of the composites was analyzed by the method using coaxial cable which is designed ac-
cording to ASTM D4935 Standard [3]. This coaxial method is applicable to near-field measurement.
The measuring instrument was composed of two parts: spectral analyser (Agilent CSA Spectrum
Analyzer N1996A-506 network analyzer) and sample holder (Figure 1). This technique involves
determining the shielding effectiveness of a base material (flat panel or coupon) using an insertion-
loss method. The flat, thin sample is irradiated with an electromagnetic wave over the frequency
range of interest. The method uses a coaxial transmission line with an interrupted inner conductor
and a flanged outer conductor. The sample is placed between the flanges in the middle of the cell.
A schematic of this instrumental set-up is shown Figure 1 [4, 6].
2.2. Dual Transverse Electromagnetic Cell
The DTEM test consists of interposing a 100 × 100 mm sheet of the sample-under-test (SUT) in
the aperture between two TEM cells, configured so that one cell acts as the transmitter while the
other serves as the receiver as shown in Figure 2. Through proper calibration and by alternating
the transmit/receive function of both cells, in theory this test allows for separation of “electric” and
“magnetic” field insertion loss of the sample between the cells. Small aperture theory is used to
explain the coupling between the two cells constituting the DTEM cell. If the aperture is electrically
small, then the scattering effect is essentially equivalent to that produced by an appropriate set of
dipole moments. These dipole moments may be used to predict the scattered fields, which in the
case of the dual TEM cell give a description of the expected aperture coupling. The dipole moments
depend on the incident (exciting) fields and the shape, size, and orientation of the aperture. These
latter effects are summarized in a quantity termed the aperture polarizability [2, 6].
3. PROJECT AND REALIZATION
The main measurement method in the controlled medium was the coaxial holder method. This
method uses a holder transmission line and a vector network analyzer, as is shown in Figure 1. The
sample material is placed and fixed in the flanged circular coaxial transmission line holder. Gener-
ally, the maximum operating frequency is around 2 GHz. The increasing of the maximum operating
frequency determines the decreasing of the flanged coaxial line dimensions and, of course, the sam-
ple dimensions. This measuring system is compact and allows automation and data proceeding by
computer control. The difficulty of this measurement method arises from the sample preparation.
Thus, the dimensions of the sample must be small, especially for higher frequency measurements
and the influence of the contact resistance between the sample and the coaxial holder is necessary

Figure 1: SE measurement device.

1146 PIERS Proceedings, Marrakesh, MOROCCO, March 20–23, 2011

to be considered. In this method we used the above mentioned theoretical descriptions. A device
for coaxial holder method was made in the laboratory at DTEEE. This device consists of two
cylindrical electrodes which are matched to 50 Ω transmission line. To generate and measure the
SE the spectral analyzer N1996A-506 from Agilent was used. Before the measurement the device
was calibrated to eliminate the device insertion loss and unwanted signals. The calibration sets
the device insertion loss to zero. After the sample was inserted between the measuring electrodes
on spectral analyzer, the level of insertion loss has changed. Signals were transmitted by coaxial
cable. The frequency was scanned within the range of 10 MHz∼1 GHz with 400 data points in both
reflection and transmission. The samples SE was calculated from the measurement results [6].
Measurements of SE can be also based on the use of a dual-TEM cell (see Figure 3). A typical
TEM (transverse electromagnetic) cell consists of a section of rectangular coaxial transmission line
tapered down at each end to match ordinary 50 Ω coaxial line. The TEM cell is well established
as a device that creates a known broad-band isolated test field. A dual-TEM cell is then simply a
pair of TEM cells with the added feature of an aperture in a shared wall. The aperture transfers
power from the driving cell fed at the Port 1 to the receiving cell. The insertion loss provided by
putting a sample on the aperture gives an evaluation of the shielding effectiveness of the material
(tested at Port 2 or 4) Figure 2.
The measuring place consists of an Agilent spectral analyzer and a DTEM cell. This cell has been
designed for measurement with a 50 Ω line and for measurement of thin samples with maximum
dimensions of 100×100 mm. For electromagnetic field generation and analysis of the resulting signal
a spectral analyser Agilent CSA Spectrum Analyzer N1996A-506 (from 100 kHz to 6 GHz) has been
used. The apparatus incorporates both the signal generator and the spectrum analyzer. Signals

Figure 2: Block diagram of dual-TEM cell. Sam- Figure 3: Dual-TEM cell for SE measurement.
ples are placed between the two cells.

60
SE[dB]

50

40

30

20
EMC plus3
MW absorbing sheet
10 Al sheet
paper

0
0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9 1
F[GHz]

Figure 4: Shielding effectiveness for FlecTron fabric.

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Marrakesh, Morocco, Mar. 20–23, 2011 1147

were transmitted by coaxial cable. The frequency was scanned within the range of 10 MHz∼1 GHz
with 260 data points in both reflection and transmission. The samples SE was calculated from the
measurement results.

4. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
The following figures (Figures 5–8) show the measurement results of the shielding effectiveness
of various shielding fabrics which were measured by the above described methods. The Figure 4
illustrates SE measured with the coaxial holder method and the Figure 5 illustrates SE measured
with the DTEM cell. On both figures we can see that the results from the SE measurement are
approximately the same. There are shown few results from the tested materials, e.g., EMC plus3
thin woven shielding fabric with the surface resistance 0.01 Ω/m2 . The highest attenuation level of
this fabric is at 0.5 GHz which is 35 dB in average. If we compare these measurement results with
a non-woven fabric made from carbon fibers with a surface conductance of 10 Ω/m2 then the EMC
plus3 type fabric has slightly better shielding qualities. The shielding effectiveness of fabric made
from carbon fibers is in average 15 dB in range from 0.2 to 1 GHz.

60
SE[dB]

50

40

30

20

EMC plus3
10 MW absorbing sheet
AL sheet
paper
0
0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9 1
F[GHz]

Figure 5: Insertion loss for FlecTron fabric type.

5. CONCLUSION
This research work preformed various measurement methods to compare the difference of shielding
effectiveness between chamber structure and construction. The various chambers have different
types of electromagnetic field and propagation of EM wave. There were proposed two different
methods to describe and measure the fabric absorption quality. To verify the functionality of these
methods an experimental measurement on few different types of samples has been made. The
results of these experiments were demonstrated on graphic diagrams and they were described.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The research described in the paper was financially supported by the research program MSM
0021630516 and research plan MSM 0021630513, Ministry of Defence of the CR, Ministry of Indus-
try and Trade of the CR (Diagnostics of Superfast Objects for Safety Testing, FR-TI1/368), Czech
Science Foundation (102/09/0314) and project of the BUT Grant Agency FEKT-S-10-13.
REFERENCES
1. MIL-STD-285, “Method of attenuation measurement for enclosures, electromagnetic shielding,
for electronic test purposes,” June 25, 1956.
2. Manara, A., “Measurement of material shielding effectiveness using a dual TEM cell and vector
network analyzer,” IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Vol. 38, No. 3, Aug.
1996.
1148 PIERS Proceedings, Marrakesh, MOROCCO, March 20–23, 2011

3. ASTM, D4935 Standard Test Method for Measuring the Electromagnetic Shielding Effective-
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electromagnetic shielding effectiveness of materials”.
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