This PhD thesis addresses the threat posed to society by sources that can produce high power electromagnetic pulses (HEPM) and be used maliciously to disturb or damage electronic equipment. The vulnerability from intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) has increased in the recent decades due to the widespread dependence of the civil society on sensitive electronic systems and proliferation of radiation sources. As the characteristics of the disturbances associated with IEMI often have very high frequency content, the existing mitigation measures and protection components may not be adequate. It was seen that for ultra wideband (UWB) transients low voltage protection components may not work as intended, due to parasitic components that arises from the packaging of the device. The large spatial distribution of many civilian facilities and critical infra-structures (e.g., power generation, communications, train system, etc.) presents many unexpected ports for an attacker as the majority of the parts of these systems are not protected or secure. As the new European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) will utilize wireless communication for communication and control of the trains the vulnerability from different radiating HPEM sources was investigated. Angles of incidence and frequencies that are a threat in a given situation are identified. Due to the possibility of unexpected ports, the propagation of differential mode ultra wideband transients in low voltage power networks, when injected into a power socket of a facility, was studied. The effects on the transient propagation from cable bends, switches and junctions were studied, both in a laboratory setup and in the network of a facility. Also, as modern electronic equipment and systems may not be tested for waveforms and disturbances other than standardized EMC tests, experiments on some common commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment were performed with non-standard test situation. It was seen that these could easily be disturbed or even permanently damaged. In addition, due to the inherent difficulties with IEMI, a new method for classifying facilities from IEMI is suggested. It is based on available terminology of accessibility (A), susceptibility (S) and consequence (C), but expands these and forms the so called IEMI/ASC-cube.

The electronic control, instrumentation and communication hardware is becoming more and more compact and faster in operation due to the increased use of large scale integration of semiconductor devices operating at higher speeds. The use of VLSI circuit based systems in various industrial and defence sectors is also increasing continuously. Since the operating threshold voltages and currents of these devices are very small they are very prone to electrical disturbance in their operation by the Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) signals. Their proper functioning is very important particularly in the case of systems used in mission mode, critical defence/industrial platforms. EMI can be generated within the electronic system/equipment itself or may result due to some external electromagnetic source. The high power Ultra Wide Band system is one such kind of external High Power Electromagnetic (HPEM) interference source which may cause malfunctioning/physical damage to the sensitive electronic systems. Hence it is necessary to test the susceptibility of electronics to such high power UWB based intentional EMI or IEMI sources. The sources for generating these transient EM fields may also be used in impulse radars and offensive applications to mal-operate/damage non-friendly electronics. The UWB system consists of a high voltage pulsed power source called pulser along with a high bandwidth (Ultra Wide Band) antenna to radiate the UWB signal. The pulse fed by the pulser to the antenna through a switch is of high voltage type (amplitude of few 10s of kV to about a MV) and has a sub-nanosecond rise time. Most of the UWB systems developed over the world have the switch employing gaseous dielectric switching media used at pressures above the atmospheric level to generate such a fast rise time voltage pulse. Use of gaseous switching media at sub-atmospheric pressures to achieve sub-ns rise time, short duration high voltage pulses required for the high power UWB applications is another possibility. This possibility has not been exploited till date. Hence it was decided to develop a pulser switch with gaseous switching media at sub-atmospheric pressures (up to 50 mbar) and achieve sub-ns rise time voltage pulses of up to 50 kV. The energy delivered out by the UWB system depends upon the pulser output energy per switching shot and the repetitive switching rate of the pulser. To achieve maximum energy output it is required to maximize either the energy per switching shot or the pulse repetition rate (PRR) of the pulser switch. The optimization of the pulser operation to achieve maximum pulser energy output in every switching shot has not been tried so far. In this work it was decided to analyze the circuit so as to achieve maximum pulser output energy per switching shot. Another objective of the study was to systematically characterize the pulser switch using various gases and gas mixtures as the switching media to evaluate the switch performance as a function of gas pressure and switch breakdown voltage. The effect of pulser and antenna performance parameters on the UWB system performance was also decided to be evaluated. Hence the present thesis work deals with the design, development, evaluation and performance optimization of a 50 kV, 25 MW UWB system based on Half Impulse Radiating Antenna (HIRA) fed by a coaxial capacitive pulser. The spark gap type self triggered pulser switch is designed to have a fixed gap spacing and variable gas pressure in order to vary the switch breakdown voltage. The switch is designed for operation with dry air, nitrogen, sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) and a mixture of different gases as the dielectric switching media with pressures of up to 5 bar above the atmospheric level and up to 50 mbar below the atmospheric level. Physical placement of the switch just above the coaxial pulser capacitor terminal offered a low inductance geometry. The rise time estimation of the switch has been carried out as a function of gas pressure and the switch arc inductance. These rise time values have been compared with the measured ones and a good agreement was found between the two. The rise time values indicate that an inverse relationship exists between the gas pressure and the rise time. The rise time was found to decrease at increased pressures. SF6 gas offered the minimum rise time out of all the gases/mixtures studied. The pulse repetition rate (PRR) of the UWB system depends upon the dielectric recovery of the gaseous switch and the charging time of the pulser capacitor. To estimate the PRR a circuit model has been proposed based on these parameters. The model shows an inverse relationship between the switch breakdown voltage (BDV) and the gas pressure with the PRR. The estimated PRR values were found to vary between 800 Hz and 5 kHz in the experimented range of the switch breakdown voltage. The PRR values have also been experimentally measured. There is a good match between the measured and the estimated values up to the switch BDV of 12.5 kV after which the difference is increased to about 20 %. The feed for the reflector of the HIRA antenna consists of a pair of coplanar conical transverse electromagnetic (TEM) feed plates as they have a better antenna aperture blockage performance. The angles of the TEM feed plates have been chosen using stereographic projections of the feed plates into the HIRA reflector. Each TEM feed plate of 200  characteristic impedance has been terminated by matched resistor. An analytical expression has been derived to optimize the pulser output voltage at which the energy output per switching shot of the UWB system is maximum. It was found that when the pulser output voltage i.e. the switch breakdown voltage is 75 % of the dc source voltage the output energy delivered is maximum. It was possible to achieve a maximum output energy of 10 J per switching shot for the designed 25 MW high power UWB system. The HIRA antenna has been analysed for the impedance profile for frequencies up to 3.5 GHz and was found to maintain a reflection performance better than -10 dB over the frequency range. The radiated field analysis of the antenna was carried out using an analytical model and numerically by using a commercially available software. It was found that as per the analytical model, the Figure of Merit (FoM) of the designed UWB system is 1.41 V for a normalized excitation feed pulse of 1 V and the 3 dB spectral content of the radiated field is between 180 MHz-1.8 GHz. The corresponding results using computer simulations of the UWB system indicate a slightly lesser FoM of 1.1. Higher FoM obtained using the analytical model is due to ignoring the antenna aperture blockage and the field diffraction effects over the TEM feed arms as well as from the rim of the reflector of the antenna. The radiated field amplitude and gain of the HIRA antenna were found to be a direct function of the frequency of the radiated signal. Higher gains and narrower beam width for the radiated field were observed with an increase in the frequency. The radiated field spectral waveform in the near field region was observed to have a notch at a particular frequency and its harmonics. The notch frequency was found to be a function of the propagation time difference called clear time. The effect of pulser rise time, antenna feed arm impedance and position on the radiated far field amplitude and wave shape was analysed. It was observed that with decrease in the pulser rise time from 700 ps to 100 ps, the radiated field amplitude increases by about 600 %. A matched termination impedance with position of 30of the TEM feed arms with respect to the vertical symmetry axis of the antenna provides a higher radiated field amplitude and lower post pulse oscillations in the radiated field waveform. The pulser switch was evaluated systematically for various performance parameters such as BDV, rise time, PRR, voltage recovery and jitter characteristics as a function of switch gas pressure, type of gaseous switching media and breakdown voltage at pressures above and below the atmospheric level. The switch BDV was found to be a linear function of pressure of the gas used i.e. dry air, nitrogen, sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) and a mixture of air and SF6. The measured rise times of all the gases were found to be in inverse proportion to the switch gas pressure. SF6 gas offered the best rise time and hence was found to be a good contender for achieving higher radiated field amplitudes and bandwidth. The voltage recovery characteristics of SF6 gas and air were experimentally studied as a function of the recovery time. It is found that both the gases have similar recovery characteristics having a distinct saturation plateau region. It was found that for a given recovery time SF6 recovers to a higher voltage than air and the recovery further improves for SF6 at increased pressures (between 0.5-2 bar). The effect of the number of switching shots on the jitter in the switch rise time was measured by operating the switch continuously at a PRR of 1 kHz and for total number shots up to 10.8 M. It was observed that the jitter increases by an order of magnitude after 10.8 M shots. This indicates that for the present switch design, the switch electrodes require maintenance (buffing, polishing, etc.) after every 3.5 M shots to maintain a reasonably low jitter. SF6 gas was characterized for a fixed source voltage to determine the effect of pressure on rise time in the sub atmospheric regime (up to 50 mbar). It was found that the rise time vs. pressure characteristics follows the Paschen’s curve with a value of pressure at which rise time is the lowest for a given source voltage. With increase in the source voltage the rise time was found to decrease. The HIRA based UWB radiating system was evaluated for radiated fields in the near and far field region for the temporal and spectral characteristics. It was found that for the source voltage of 25 kV, the FoM in the near and far field region are 29.4 kV and 28.9 kV respectively. The fields in the distant far field region have more oscillatory post pulses due to the effect of ground reflections and the low frequency dipole moment mismatch of the antenna. Since SF6 gas offered the best rise time of 193 ps at a voltage of 46 kV than the other gases tried, the radiated field is the highest (5.3 kV/m) with SF6 at a distance of 10 m offering a gain factor of 1.15. Dry air offered a radiated field gain factor of 0.83 which got improved by 33 % by just 30 % addition of SF6 gas into the air. The field amplitudes measured were in good agreement with those computed using the analytical model and the computer simulations and they follow the 1/R rule as a function of the far field distance, R in the bore sight direction. The measured radiation pattern of the UWB system showed a focussed and narrow radiated field beam at higher frequencies with a half field beam width (HFBW) of 8 at 2 GHz. The UWB system was measured to have dominant highest cut off frequency of 1.79 GHz with a band ratio and percentage band width of 9.56 and 162.11 % respectively. This confirmed that the developed system is of sub-hyper band radiator type. The UWB system developed through this work is having a better performance than some of the other systems developed elsewhere in the world, in terms of FoM (53 kV) and the PRR (> 1 kHz). The system can be further improved in terms of consistency (jitter) and intensity by use of a triggered switch and hydrogen gas at 100 bar pressure as the switching medium respectively. The profile of the TEM feed plates of the HIRA antenna may be further improved to have a better antenna aperture fill factor. Such multiple systems in an arrayed manner may be used either for higher power output/better agility of the radiated field beam. This system will be fully exploited for the applications of susceptibility evaluation of electronic circuits, non-friendly applications as well as impulse radars

Society’s dependence on electronic and electrical systems has increased rapidly over the past few decades, and people are relying more and more on these gadgets in their daily life because of the efficiency in operation which these systems can offer. This has revolutionized many areas of electrical and electronics engineering including power sector, telecommunication sector, transportation and many other allied areas. With progress in time, the sophistication in the systems also increased. Also as the systems size reduced from micro level to nano level, the compactness of the systems increased. This paved the way for development in the digital electronics leading to new and efficient IC 0s that came into existence. Power sector also faced a resurge in its technology. Most of the analog meters are now replaced by digital meters. The increased sophistication and compactness in the digital system technology made it susceptible to electromagnetic interference especially from High Power Electromagnetic Sources. Communication, data processing, sensors, and similar electronic devices are vital parts of the modern technological environment. Damage or failures in these devices could lead to technical or financial disasters as well as injuries or the loss of life. Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) can be explained as any malicious generation of electromagnetic energy introducing noise or signals into electric and electronic systems, thus disrupting, confusing or damaging these systems. The disturbance may interrupt, obstruct, or otherwise degrade or limit the effective performance of the circuit. These effects can range from a simple degradation of data to a total loss of data. The source may be any object, artificial or natural, that carries rapidly changing electrical currents, such as an electrical circuit. The sources of electromagnetic interference can be either unintentional or intentional. The sources producing electromagnetic interference can be of different power levels, different frequency of operation and of different field strength. One such classification of these sources are the High Power Electromagnetic Sources (HPEM) High Power Electromagnetic environment refers to sources producing very high peak electromagnetic fields at very high power levels. These power levels coupled with the extremely high magnitude of the fields are sufficient to cause disastrous effects on the electrical and electronic systems. There has been a lot of developments in the field of the source technology of HPEM sources so that they are now one of the strongest sources of electromagnetic interference. High Power Electromagnetic environment refers to the sources producing very high peak electromagnetic fields at very high power levels. These power levels coupled with the extremely high magnitude of the fields are sufficient to cause disastrous effects on the electrical and electronic systems. HPEM environments are categorized based on the source characteristics such as the peak electric field, often called threat level, frequency coverage or bandwidth, average power density and energy content. The sources of electromagnetic interference can be either unintentional or intentional. Some examples of unintentional sources are the increased use of electromagnetic spectrum which generates disturbance to various systems operating in that frequency band, poor design of systems without taking care of other systems present nearby as well as lightning. Intentional sources are High altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) or Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (NEMP) due to nuclear detonations, Ultra Wide Band (UWB) field from Impulse Radiating Antennas (IRA), Nar-row band fields like those coming from High Power Microwaves (HPM), High Intensity Radio Frequency (HIRF) sources. Of these the lightning is natural and all other sources are man-made. The significant progress in the Intentional High-Power Electromagnetic (HPEM) sources and antenna technologies and the easy access to simple HPEM systems for anyone entail the need to determine the susceptibility of electronic equipment as well as coupling of these fields with systems such as cables (buried as well as aerial), airborne vehicle etc. to these types of threats. Buried cables are widely used in the communication and power sectors due to their efficient functioning in urban cities and towns. These cables are more prone to electromagnetic interferences from HPEM sources. The buried communication cables or even the buried data cables are connected to sensitive equipments and hence even a slight rise in the voltage or the current at the terminals of the equipments can become a serious problem for the smooth operation of the system. In the first part of the thesis the effect of the electromagnetic field due to these sources on the cables laid underground has been studied. The second part of this thesis deals with the study of the interaction of the EM field from the above mentioned HPEM sources with an airborne vehicle. Airborne vehicle and its payload are extremely expensive so that any destruction to these as a result of the voltages and currents induced on the vehicle on account of the incoming HPEM fields can be quite undesirable. The incoming electromagnetic fields will illuminate the vehicle along its axis which results in the induction of currents and voltages. These currents and voltages will get coupled to the internal control circuits that are extremely sensitive. If the induced voltage/ current magnitude happen to be above the damage threshold level of these circuits then it will result in either a malfunction of the circuit or a permanent damage of it, with both of them being detrimental to the success of the mission. This will even result in the abortion of the mission or possible degradation of the vehicle performance. Hence it is worthwhile to see what will be the influence of an incoming HPEM electromagnetic field on the airborne vehicle with and without the presence of an exhaust plume. In this work, the HPEM sources considered are NEMP, IRA and HPM. The electromagnetic fields produced by the EMP can induce large voltage and current transients in electrical and electronic circuits which can lead to a possible malfunction or permanent damage of the systems. The electric field at the earth 0s surface can be modelled as a double exponential pulse as per the IEC standard 61000-2-9. The NEMP field incident on the earth’s surface is considered as that coming from a source at a distance far away from the earth’s surface; hence a plane wave approximation has been used. Impulse radiating antennas are the ones that are used as the major source of ultra wide band radiation. These are highly powerful antennas that use a pulsed power source as the input and this power source is conditioned to get an extremely sharp rise time pulse. These antennas are very high power antennas that are capable of producing a significant electromagnetic field. Impulse radiating antenna is a paraboloidal reflector and hence is an aperture antenna. Initially the radiated field due to this aperture needs to be found out at any observation point from the antenna. In this thesis, the aperture distribution method is used to accurately determine the field due to the aperture. In this method the field reflected from the surface of the reflector is first found on an imaginary plane through the focal point of the reflector that is normal to the axis of the reflector, by using the principles of geometrical optics, which then is extended to the observation point. The IRA considered for the present work is the one of the most powerful IRA as per the published literature available in the open domain. This has an input voltage of 1.025 MV. The far field electric field measured at the boresight (at r =85 m) being equal to 62 kV/m, and the uncorrected pulse rise time (10%-90%) is 180 ps for this IRA. HPM sources are usually electromagnetic radiators having a reflector with a horn antenna kept at their focal point for excitation. HPM sources generally operate in single mode or at tens or hundreds of Hz repetition rates. Many HPM radiators are developed in the world each with their own peculiar geometry and power levels. In the present thesis, a single waveguide (WR-975) fed HPM antenna assembly has been studied. The chosen waveguide has a cut-o_ frequency of 1 GHz and a power level of 10 GW. The wavelength associated with the waveguide is 0.3 m. The field pattern shows a definite peak in its response when the frequency is 1 GHz, the cut-off frequency of the waveguide. The electric field coming out of the HPEM sources travel through the medium that is either air alone or a combination of air and soil respectively depending upon whether the circuit on which the coupling is analysed is an airborne vehicle or an underground cable. The media plays a major role in the coupling, as the field magnitude is influenced by the characteristic properties of the media. As height increases the magnitude of the electric field decreases for all types of sources and also the time before which the field waveform starts is increased. The electric field in the soil is decided by the soil properties such as its conductivity and permittivity. The soil is modelled in frequency domain and the high frequency behaviour of soils is considered with its conductivity and permittivity taken as functions of frequency, as the incident field has high frequency components. A soil medium can be electromagnetically viewed as a four component dielectric mixture consisting of soil particles, air voids, bound water, and free water. When electric field is incident on the soil, it gets polarized. This is as a result of a wide variety of processes, including polarization of electrons in the orbits around atoms, distortion of molecules, reorientation of water molecules, accumulation of charge at interfaces, and electrochemical reactions. Whatever is the HPEM source, an increase in the soil conductivity results in an increased attenuation of the field. Also there is a significant loss of high frequency components in the GHz range in the field due to the selective absorption by the soil. This effect causes the percentage attenuation to be maximum for HPM and minimum for NEMP and IRA lying in between these two extremities. Increase in permittivity of the soil causes attenuation of the electric field for all HPEM sources. This is due to the relaxation mechanisms in the soil due to atomic- or molecular-scale resonances. The coupling of the electromagnetic fields due to HPEM sources is considered in the first phase. Two cables are considered (i) buried shielded and (ii) buried shielded twisted pair cables. The results are arrived at using the Enhanced Transmission Line model. The induced current is more for a shielded cable than a twisted pair cable of the same configuration. The induced current magnitude depends upon the type of the HPEM source, the depth of burial of the cable and the point on the cable where the current/ voltage is computed. Current is maximum at the centre of the cable for a matched termination and the voltage is the minimum at this point. The ratio of the induced current in the inner conductor with respect to the shield current of a shielded cable is the least for an HPM, and maximum for NEMP. This is due to the fact that higher frequencies are absorbed more by the shield of the cable. This affects HPM induced current the maximum and NEMP the least because of the presence of the lower frequency components in NEMP. Induced current in the twisted pair cable depends upon the number of pairs of the cable and the pitching of the cable. The electromagnetic field from the HPEM sources propagates with less attenuation in air due to the lower resistance this medium offers for electromagnetic wave propagation. Hence any system in air, be it electrical or electronic, will be under the strong illumination by these electromagnetic fields. As the second part of this thesis, the influence of the electromagnetic fields from all the three HPEM sources on an airborne vehicle in flight is analysed. For this part of study, the Electromagnetic (EM) fields radiated by all the three sources at different heights from the earth 0s surface have been computed. The coupling study has been done for the case of a vehicle with plume as well as without plume. For the second case, the electromagnetic modelling of the plume has been done taking into consideration its conductivity, which in turn depends on the different ionic species present in the plume. The species of the exhaust plume depends upon the chemical reactions taking place in the combustion chamber of the nozzle of the vehicle. The presence of the alkali metals as impurity in the airborne vehicle propellant will generate considerable ion particles such as Na+, Cl in addition to e- in the plume mixture during combustion which makes the plume electrically conducting. But it does not influence the pressure, temperature and velocity of the plume. After the nozzle throat, the exhaust plume regains the supersonic speed, so the flow of the exhaust plume is assumed as compressible flow in the second region. The electrons have high collision frequency, high number density, high plasma frequency and lower molecular mass and hence the highly mobile electrons dominate the heavy ion particle in the computation of the electrical conductivity of the plume. The plume conductivity decreases marginally from the axis till a distance equal to the nozzle radius but the peak value increases sharply towards the exit plane edge of the nozzle radius. The induced current is computed using Method of Moments. The induced current depends upon the type of interference source, its characteristics, whether the plume is present or not and the type of the plume. The HPM induces maximum current in the vehicle because of the fact that the plume has a tendency to become more conductive at these frequencies. The induced currents due to the EM fields from IRA and NEMP comes after the HPM. The presence of the plume enhances the magnitude of the induced current. If the plume is homogeneous then the current induced in it is more.