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Testing for RF immunity

February 10th, 2020, 2:46 pm

Think your system has good RFrejection? This would have been a good test. Check out the pulse power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I

Re: Testing for RF immunity

February 12th, 2020, 3:47 pm

tomp wrote:Think your system has good RFrejection? This would have been a good test. Check out the pulse power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I


Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generation is far more severe than simple RFI/EMI contamination. EMP is a very strong pulse that if it gets to the silicon die it is the same as a static discharge that will trash the chip. I've seen electron scanning microscope images of what that looks like. It looks like a microscopic bullet hole.

That's the main reason Russia's military air assets used vacuum tubes. Some our early assets also used vacuum tubes -- they were essentially immune to EMP -- but when things started going the way of SS, designers had to develop hardening in the form of aggressive shielding at the chip level to prevent a failure from close proximately to a nuclear event.

The DOD has actually developed nuclear devices that have less "bang" and more "pulse" to disable an enemy's infrastructure rather than trashing it. This is in the public record so I am not compromising my clearance.

Re: Testing for RF immunity

February 12th, 2020, 4:35 pm

The reference to the Atlas Trestle came about in a documentary on the AWACS plane. It is essentially a flying Faraday cage and was tested at the Trestle.

Re: Testing for RF immunity

February 12th, 2020, 4:54 pm

tomp wrote:The reference to the Atlas Trestle came about in a documentary on the AWACS plane. It is essentially a flying Faraday cage and was tested at the Trestle.


YEP! Without AWACS and satellites we would be "blind." Not a good thing.
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