How Good is My Shield? An Introduction to Transfer Impedance and Shielding Effectiveness

Karen Burnham

President & Chief Engineer
EMC United

How good is your shield?

Watch our second webinar led by Karen Burnham, designed to shed light on two essential measures of shield quality for electromagnetic compatibility concerns: transfer impedance and shielding effectiveness. In the world of electronics, ensuring that your designs are protected from electromagnetic interference is crucial for maintaining performance, reliability, and regulatory compliance. This webinar aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of these key metrics, their significance, and their practical applications in your design processes.

Transfer impedance and shielding effectiveness are both critical parameters that help designers evaluate the effectiveness of shielding materials and structures. By understanding these metrics, you can better assess how well your design can prevent unwanted electromagnetic interference from affecting your circuits. This knowledge is vital for creating robust and reliable electronic products.

In this session, you will learn about the foundations of each metric, exploring their definitions, how they are measured, and the importance of each in different contexts. Karen will also discuss the similarities and differences between these measures, providing you with a clear picture of when and how to use them effectively. Additionally, we will cover recommended testing techniques that can help you accurately evaluate the shield quality of your designs.

What you will learn:

• The basis of transfer impedance
• The basis of shielding effectiveness
• How those two quantities differ
• Recommended test methods per measure and frequency range

This webinar is an excellent opportunity for electronics designers, engineers, managers and anyone involved in electronics to gain deeper insights into shield quality. By understanding transfer impedance and shielding effectiveness, you can make more informed design decisions, ultimately leading to higher quality and more reliable electronic products.

About Karen Burnham

Karen Burnham has worked in and around the aerospace, defense, automotive, and broader consulting world since 1996. She has a BS in Physics, an MS in Electrical Engineering, and a talent for translating EMC to English. She has managed requirements and test planning for NASA and the Dream Chaser spaceship and others. She has done troubleshooting on electric vehicles for Ford Motor Company and others. She has initiated innovative SBIRs and STTRs through government centers and worked on classified programs. She has consulted on projects across a wide swath of industries and sits on multiple international standards committees, landing her in her current role of Vice President of Standards for the IEEE EMC Society.

Ms. Burnham founded EMC United, Inc. in 2024 in order to focus on helping companies and hardware designers solve EMC problems, ideally before they even start. She believes that, far from being black magic, EMC can be understandable (and even fun!), and she hopes to spread that passion more widely.