HPEM protection on HF transmission lines

Traditional protection concepts against electromagnetic interferences are combinations of nonlinear elements like spark gaps, varistors or suppressor diodes. Due to parasitic capacitances and inductivities and the general behavior of the elements, a trade off has to be made between the frequency bandwidth and the energy absorption capability of the protection circuit. For high frequency applications with signal frequencies above about 500MHz a sufficient protection can not be given without changing the transmitted signals itself. Additionally this kind of protection concept is designed and optimized against transient interferences with rise times down to some nanoseconds, for example the LEMP, the NEMP or the ESD. Current researches focus on transient interferences with rise times in the picosecond range and pulse widths of a few nanoseconds, the so called ultra wideband (UWB) pulses, combined with a significant voltage amplitude of some kilovolts. In this paper investigations on nonlinear protection elements and linear filters against line-coupled UWB pulses with high voltage amplitudes will be done with special focus on the protection of high frequency data-lines.