Distortion Evaluation of EMP Sensors Using Associated-Hermite Functions

Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a kind of transient electromagnetic phenomenon with short rise time of the leading edge and wide spectrum, which usually disrupts communications and damages electronic equipment and system. It is challenging for an EMP sensor to measure a wideband electromagnetic pulse without distortion for the whole spectrum. Therefore, analyzing the distortion of EMP measurement is crucial to evaluating the sensor distortion characteristics and correcting the measurement results. Waveform fidelity is usually employed to evaluate the distortion of an antenna. However, this metric depends on specific signal waveforms, thus is unsuitable for evaluating and analyzing the distortion of EMP sensors. In this paper, an associated-hermite-function based distortion analysis method including system transfer matrices and distortion rates is proposed, which is general and independent from individual waveforms. The system transfer matrix and distortion rate can be straightforwardly calculated by the signal orthogonal transformation coefficients using associated-hermite functions. Distortion of a sensor vs. frequency is then visualized via the system transfer matrix, which is convenient in quantitative analysis of the distortion. Measurement of a current probe, a coaxial pulse voltage probe and a B-field sensor were performed, based on which the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed distortion analysis method is successfully verified.