A novel design of Rogowski coil for

measurement of nanosecond-risetime
high-level pulsed current
Cite as: Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4916094
Submitted: 21 November 2014 • Accepted: 11 March 2015 • Published Online: 26 March 2015

Ruo-Yu Han, Wei-Dong Ding, Jia-Wei Wu, et al.

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Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4916094 86, 035114

© 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.

 REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS 86, 035114 (2015)

A novel design of Rogowski coil for measurement of nanosecond-risetime

high-level pulsed current
Ruo-Yu Han, Wei-Dong Ding,a) Jia-Wei Wu, Hai-Bin Zhou, Yan Jing, Qiao-Jue Liu,
You-Chuang Chao, and Ai-Ci Qiu
State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China
(Received 21 November 2014; accepted 11 March 2015; published online 26 March 2015)
In pulsed power systems, pulsed currents with risetimes from nanosecond to microsecond can be
effectively measured by self-integrating Rogowski coils. Appropriate design of the structure and the
integrating resistor is crucial to the high-frequency response of a coil. In this paper, several novel
designs of Rogowski coil’s integrating resistors were proposed and tested. Experimental results
showed that the optimized coil could response square waves with fronts of ∼1.5 ns and had a
sensitivity of ∼0.75 V/kA. The maximal peak current was designed as 100 kA. C 2015 AIP Publishing
LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4916094]

I. INTRODUCTION II. A BRIEF THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

In this study, the cross section of the core was rectangular
Rogowski coil is a toroidal winding widely used in current
for manufacture convenience, which is shown in Fig. 1. Be-
measurement. It has been researched for more than 100 years
sides, the coil had a return counter-turn, also called a return
since it was proposed in 1912 by Rogowski.1 This kind of
loop, aiming to diminish the effect of stray magnetic field. A
sensor possesses many advantages.2 For example, it has no
detailed explanation of this feature is presented in the Sec. V.
direct electrical connection with the main circuit. Up to now,
In the distributed model, the coil is regarded as a
numerous Rogowski coils have been designed for different
distributed-element transmission line and the integrating
applications, such as pulsed current measurement, relay
resistor as a RLC circuit, which can be seen in Fig. 2.9,11
protection, and partial discharge monitoring.3–7 These coils
According to Fig. 2, the voltage and current in this model
can be divided into self-integrating coils and differentiating
can be described by
coils by their operation mode. Also, the cores have two types,
“air core” and “magnetic core.”8 ∂u(x,t) ∂i(x,t) ∂i 1(t)
Because of stray capacitance and parasitic inductance, − = R0i(x,t) + L 0 ± M0 , (1)
∂x ∂t ∂t
it is more difficult to measure a nanosecond-risetime pulsed
current than a microsecond-risetime one. In some articles, ∂i(x,t) ∂u(x,t)
− = G0u(x,t) + C0 . (2)
the coil was considered a delay line and adopted distributed ∂x ∂t
parameter model to calculate its response under different input
The “plus” or “minus” of M0 is determined by the direc-
currents.9–12 While in other articles, some Rogowski coils
tion of the main current flowing through the coil. With zero
which could measure the pulsed currents with nanosecond
initial condition, equations mentioned above can be solved by
risetime were made and tested by experiments.13–16 According
the method of Laplace transformation,9,17
to these papers, it could be considered that, for measuring fast
(risetime ∼1 ns), high-level (magnitude more than 100 kA) l
pulsed currents, air core self-integrating Rogowski coils with
1
Z0 0 sM0(x)I1 · cosh γ(l − x) · dx
I(l, s) = Iout(s) = ± , (3)
few turns are often used. sinh γl + ( ZZ ) · cosh γl
0
Unlike magnetic core Rogowski coils, air core self-
integrating Rogowski coils are much harder to be achieved where Z, Z0, γ, and I1 represent terminal impedance, wave
when measuring fast and high-level pulsed currents. Although impedance, propagation constant, and Laplace transformation
some researchers made coils with good high-frequency of primary current, respectively.9 The accuracy of this model
response, few investigated the effects of the integrating resistor depends much on the calculation accuracy of these parameters.
and structure of coils.8,13 They are obtained by equations in previous studies.8,10,18 Nev-
In the present article, novel integrating resistors and an ertheless, accurate estimation of the parameters in distributed
optimized structure of the coil are proposed and tested by model is difficult. Even the meaning of some parameters is
experiments. unclear. For example, M0 is used by Dubickas11 to represent
induced electromotive force caused by primary current while
Cooper9 used u(t). Some essential simplifications were also
a)Electronic mail: wdding@mail.xjtu.edu.cn. made in these simulations.

0034-6748/2015/86(3)/035114/7/$30.00 86, 035114-1 © 2015 AIP Publishing LLC

035114-2 Han et al.
FIG. 1. Structure of the Rogowski core in this study.
III. DESIGN OF ROGOWSKI COILS
A typical self-integrating Rogowski coil has three parts,
toroidal coil (including main spiral winding and return
counter-turn), integrating resistor, and electrostatic shield.
Design of the coil and the integrating resistor will be discussed
in detail, respectively.
A. Design of the coil
Many factors should be considered during the design of
the coil. The size of the coil is usually determined by its appli-
cation. In this study, inner radius a was 40 mm and outer radius
b was 50 mm. Height h and distance H were both 10 mm. The
material of the coil should have fine thermo-stability, small
coefficient of thermal expansion, high mechanical strength,
and sufficient dielectric strength. Moreover, the permittivity
should be as small as possible to reduce stray capacitance
(between turns and the return-loop) and increase propagation
velocity. Then, Teflon was selected for its conformance to
requirements. The number of turns N decides the length of the
coil wire. Transit time T depends much on the length of the
wire. Neglecting inter-turn capacitance, it has the following
form:8
√ inter-turn capacitance.
T = l ε µ, (4)
where l, ε, and µ are total wire length around the coil, permit-
tivity, and magnetic permeability of the coil’s material. Less
transit time leads to better response to fast wave, while worse
response to slow wave.4,10
Since the size of the coil is determined by the environ-
mental factors, there are only two parameters that need to be
settled, N and d (wire diameter).
Supposing the terminal impedance Z is pure resistance of
0.1 Ω. Simulations are helpful to select proper parameters in
the distributed model.
First, the wire diameter d is assumed as 0.6 mm. Then,
change the number of turns N with values of 10, 50, and 100.
The results are shown in Fig. 3. It can be easily found that the
upper cutoff frequency f H is about 109 rad/s, when N is 10. As
N increases, f H decreases to 4 × 107 rad/s quickly. Besides, the
FIG. 2. Distributed model of Rogowski coil.
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015)
FIG. 3. Bode diagram of different N when d is 0.6 mm.
magnitude increases slightly as N increases. The results also
reveal the law that the smaller number of turns leads to better
high-frequency response and worse low-frequency response.
Similarly, N is assumed as 50 and d is assigned to 0.6 mm,
1.2 mm, and 1.8 mm. The results are shown in Fig. 4. It
can be seen that different values of d have little influence on
the coil’s frequency characteristics. Both the upper and lower
cutoff frequencies decrease as d increases. In other words,
smaller d means better high-frequency response and worse
low-frequency response. These phenomena could be explained
by the variation of stray capacitance. Smaller N and d give
longer distance between turns, which results in reducing the
Considering the results above and the previous simula-
tions, the number of turns N is adopted as 30 and the wire
diameter d is adopted as 1 mm in this study. The material object
is shown in Fig. 5.
B. Design of integrating resistors
The inductance of the coil is quite low because of the air
coil and the small number of turns. It is advisable to select
an integrating resistor with low impedance, which means that
terminal impedance is low. Low impedance leads to better
high-frequency response,9 so a integrating resistor is similar to
a current shunt, or saying current viewing resistor (CVR). Co-
axial structure is most commonly used in Rogowski coils.8,19
The structure of the coaxial integrating resistor is illustrated in
Fig. 6.
035114-3 Han et al. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015)

FIG. 6. Structure of the coaxial integrating resistor.

the high frequency will distort the output voltage because of

the inductance, and the output voltage is supposed as a form
of
di out
uout = L t + Rti out. (7)
dt
FIG. 4. Bode diagram of different d when N is 50. Actually, the front of square wave has a form of

 At, 0 < t < t r

It seems like any ordinary coaxial structure can meet the
requirements in this study. However, if the coil is used to
measure a large amplitude current with nanosecond front, its
structure must be specifically designed. The large amplitude
and the steep front require low resistance and low inductance
of the integrating resistor.
The inductance of insulation layer is the main part and has
a form of
µ 0l t r t2
Lt ≈ ln( ),
2π r t1
where l t, r t1, and r t2 represent the insulation layer’s length,
inner radius, and outer radius separately.
The resistance of coaxial structure has a form of
ρl t
Rt ≈ 2 2
, (6)
π(r t4 − r t3)
where l t, r 3, and r 4 represent the outer conductor layer’s length,
inner radius, and outer radius separately.
The coil could be considered as a current source and the
output current of this source is supposed as a square wave. So
FIG. 5. Real object of the coil.

I1 = 
 At r, t ≥ t r , (8)

where t r is the risetime of the square wave and A is a constant
representing the steepness of the wave.
It is also supposed that the coil has a flat frequency
response, and the output voltage will have a form of
 K AL t + K ARtt, 0 < t < t r

uout = 
 K ARtt r, t ≥ t r , (9)

(5) where K is a coefficient. Then at t r, the wave is discontinuous.
In order to diminish the distortion and measuring error, L t and
Rt should satisfy the following equation:
K AL t
error = ≤ 10%. (10)
K ARtt r
This equation also represents the voltage overshoot
caused by inductance. If the risetime of the square wave is
1 ns, the ratio Rt/L t should be at least 1 × 1010.
Thus, the design of insulation layer and outer conductor
layer is extremely important. The insulation layer should be as
thin as possible to reduce the inductance. The outer conductor
layer should be thick enough for low resistance and little
increase of L t.
Considering the low resistivity of commonly used metal,
such as aluminum, copper, and stainless steel, the outer
conductor layer should be as thin as possible. For example,
Pellinen used 0.0125 mm thick stainless steel to make a 0.1 Ω
resistor.13 In this study, metal spraying method and surface
mounted device (SMD) resistors were also used as outer
conductor layer. Besides, the inductance could be limited by
reducing the thickness of insulation layer. And the method
of anodic oxidation was helpful to make an extremely thin
insulation layer. The material objects (without shield) are
shown in Fig. 7.
The inner conductor layer is an aluminum cylinder. The
insulation layer is the light gray part in Fig. 7(b) with an
average thickness of 0.01 mm. The outer conductor layer is
035114-4 Han et al.
FIG. 7. Structure of the coaxial integrating resistors. (a) Gold. (b) Stainless
steel. (c) SMD resistors.
made of gold, stainless steel, and SMD resistors, which is
shown in Fig. 7, respectively. The parameters of them are
presented in Table I. The results in Table I are gained by
calculation.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The Rogowski coils in this study were calibrated and
tested by a square wave generator.20,21 The equipment is shown
in Fig. 8. The self-made generator could produce a square
wave with a front of 1-5 ns and full width at a half maximum
(FWHM) of ∼100 ns. The voltage of the square wave was 1-
3 kV. The voltage and front could be adjusted by changing
the parameters of the generator. The output square wave was
transmitted along a 50 Ω cable with a length of ∼2 m. At the
end of the cable, a 50 Ω matched resistor and a coaxial structure
(made by electrostatic shield) were used. The main current
flowed through the center of the coil and then back through the
outer conductor of the coaxial structure. The coaxial structure
ensured a relatively uniform main magnetic field coupled with
the coil. This structure with a 50 Ω matched resistor also made
a low inductance terminal, meaning the voltage and current
had almost the same waveform at the end of the cable.
Since the air core coil has no magnetic saturation, it could
be calibrated by a low current. The output of the generator
was a voltage square wave with amplitude of 1 kV by a 50 Ω
coaxial cable. So the primary current was a square wave with
amplitude of 20 A. The voltage waveform was presented in
Fig. 9 as a reference. In the figure, the risetime of the square
wave front is ∼1.5 ns.
In fact, the bandwidth of the square wave in this exper-
iment was more than 200 MHz, while the voltage probe in
our laboratory only had a bandwidth of 75 MHz. In order to
measure a square wave voltage with ∼1.5 ns front, the coax-
ial structure was removed and the output cable was directly
TABLE I. Parameters of the objects (considering skin depth).
Gold layer Stainless steel foil SMD resistors
Thickness ∼40 nm 0.01 mm
Resistance R t 0.429 Ω 0.1322 Ω
Inductance L t 10.08 pH 11.25 pH >11.25 pH
R t/L t 4.26 × 1010 1.175 × 1010
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015)
FIG. 8. Structure of the coaxial integrating resistor.
connected to oscilloscope (Tektronix MDO3054) through a
40 dB coaxial attenuator with 4 GHz bandwidth. The square
wave generator used a gas switch, which could cause the uncer-
tainty of the output signal. A series of voltage waveforms (10
times) was acquired. The results showed that the mean value
was 1.003 kV and the standard deviation was 0.008 72 kV.
The 50 Ω matched resistor had a value of 50.87 Ω by a LCR
meter (TH2817B) at the frequency of 100 kHz. Supposing
the coaxial structure was a pure resistor (50.87 Ω), the “real”
output signal was estimated as 19.72 ± 0.17 A.
The output waveforms of these three coils were shown in
Fig. 10.
In the figure above, the resistor using stainless steel
possessed the best performance, while the SMD resistors
performed the worst. Since the main signal was in several
tens of millivolts, noise was inevitable. Neither the stainless
steel nor the gold layer distorted the waveform. However,
SMD resistors distorted the front of the wave because of its
larger inductance. Although gold layer provided a larger Rt/L t
than stainless steel foil, it seemed that the latter had a better
performance, which disaccorded with the results in Sec. III.
The reason might be the uneven thickness of the gold layer,
which resulted in an inhomogeneous distribution of current.
So the value of Rt/L t was not exactly equal to 4.26 × 1010.
Square wave with a faster front would be used in following
studies to determine a better one between stainless steel foil
and gold layer.
The sensitivities of these three coils were 1.6 mV/A,
0.75 mV/A, and 15 mV/A. Calculated by modified distributed
model with the data in Table I, the sensitivities turn out to be
5.60 mV/A, 3.16 mV/A, and 7.08 mV/A. These results did
not match the experimental results because of the inaccurate
estimation of the coil’s parameters, which would be discussed
in Sec. V.
>0.3 Ω
FIG. 9. Voltage waveform front.
035114-5 Han et al.
FIG. 10. Voltage waveform front. (a) Resistor using gold film. (b) Resistor
using stainless steel foil. (c) Resistor using SMD resistors.
A typical current waveform measured by the coil with
stainless steel foil was shown in Fig. 11. In the figure, the
risetime of the square wave front was also ∼1.5 ns, which fitted
the front of voltage front in Fig. 9.
V. DISCUSSION
It is necessary to discuss the interesting phenomena that
appeared in these experiments.
FIG. 11. Current waveform front.
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015)
FIG. 12. A typical waveform when used aluminum foil.
A. The insulation and conductor layers
At first, a 0.01 mm thick aluminum foil was used
as the outer conductor layer while a 0.05 mm Teflon film as
the insulation layer. Using the aluminum foil could decrease
the sensitivity of the coil. The resistance could be even less
than 0.01 Ω, so the sensitivity might reach 0.1 mV/A. How-
ever, the influence of inductance appeared as discussed in
the Sec. III. A typical waveform with aluminum foil was
shown in Fig. 12. The output waveform was the voltage of the
resistor’s inductance. The resistive voltage is much lower than
the inductive voltage. Even though the insulation layer was
thin enough and L t reached ∼10 pH, Rt/L t might still be far
less than 1010. There are two ways to solve this problem. One
is to use a thinner foil. The other one is to use a foil with larger
resistivity. All things considered, metal spraying and 0.01 mm
stainless steel foil were used. However, the lowest sensitivity in
this study was 0.75 mV/A, which made it hard to measure the
current larger than 500 kA. In our following studies, modified
resistors would be designed and investigated, aiming to reach
the sensitivity of 0.1 mV/A.
B. Influence of the connection part
Another interesting phenomenon was the influence of the
connection part between the coil and the integrating resistor.
Previously, few researchers concerned the connection part.
Usually, the connection part consists of two leads. Fig. 13
provided a model with an integrating resistor. This model was
just the terminal part in Fig. 2.
If the connection part was short or the integrating resistor
possessed a relatively large resistance, the influence of L t1, L t2,
FIG. 13. The modified model of terminal of the coil.
035114-6 Han et al. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015)

FIG. 15. Shapes of the leads. (a) Shape of leads at first. (b) Shape of leads
finally.

For example, when stainless steel was used, the calculated

sensitivity was 3.16 mV/A, while the experimental result was
0.75 mV/A. The upper cutoff frequency was also lower than
FIG. 14. Two output waveforms in the experiment. (a) An output waveform that in the experiments.
in the experiment. (b) Another output waveform in the experiment. One reason might be the estimation of the parameters
in the model did not fit the real value. Especially in a high-
frequency case, various factors should be considered. The
Ct, Rc, and e(t) could be neglected. However, in this study, Rogowski coil in this study used a return counter-turn. This
resistance and inductance of the integrating resistor were quite structure has two major advantages, avoiding the influence of
low, and the connection part was 10 mm long. The calculation magnetic flux normal to the face of return counter-turn and
results showed that the resistor’s inductance was much lower putting both terminals at the same end of the spiral.22,23 The
than L t1 or L t2. main spiral winding, the return counter-turn, and the electro-
The interesting phenomenon was shown in Fig. 14(a). At static shield constructed a three-conductor transmission line.
first, two sharp pulses at 0 ns and 100 ns were regarded as However, in this study, the electrostatic shield was neglected
the inductive voltage. With the direction of the coil reversed and the coil was considered as a two-conductor transmission
and yet the integrating resistor remaining at the same posi- line, which consisted of the main spiral winding and the return
tion, another interesting phenomenon appeared, as shown in counter-turn. The per-unit-length parameters were calculated
Fig. 14(b).
The two sharp pulses (indicated in Fig. 14) were in
the opposite direction of the main signal, which proved that
the two sharp pulses were not caused by the inductance of the
resistor. Then, the shape of the connecting leads was changed.
At first, the leads were presented in Fig. 15(a). The distance d
was 5 mm. Finally, it turned into the shape in Fig. 15(b).
After this change, the results in Fig. 10(b) could be ob-
tained. Using transfer function of the modified model in Fig. 2,
bode diagrams were plotted in Fig. 16 with terminal impedance
Z regarded as a pure resistance or impedances (defined by two
shapes in Fig. 15).
In Fig. 16, the connection part mainly affected the lower
cutoff frequency of the coil. This might have explained the
distortion and oscillation after the front. It is also obvious that
the connection part had little influence on the upper cutoff
frequency, explaining that sharp pulse was generated by the
electromagnetic interference rather than the inductive voltage.

C. Disagreement of simulations and experiments

The third interesting phenomenon was that the calcula-
tion results did not agree with the experimental results well. FIG. 16. Bode diagrams with different connections.
035114-7 Han et al.
according to the geometry of this two-conductor transmission
line. Nevertheless, the estimations of these parameters were
based on the previous papers, which might not be the real
values. The effect of the return counter-turn was not fully
considered.
Another reason was the transfer function did not consider
the skin depth effect, which would also lead some errors be-
tween the calculation and experiment. Besides, the uncertainty
was inevitable in the experimental process.
It was obviously that the model adopted in this study could
not well describe the characteristics of the Rogowski coil.
VI. CONCLUSION
Three Rogowski coils with different integrating resistors
and were designed and tested in this article. The experimental
results showed that the Rogowski coils could measure the
current with a ∼1.5 ns rise-time. The lowest sensitivity was
0.75 mV/A, which can help to measure high-level current.
Novel designs of integrating resistors used in this study
had been proved to be suitable for fast pulsed currents mea-
surement. Improvements, such as new structure of the integrat-
ing resistors with lower resistance and larger ratio of Rt/L t as
well as better estimations of coil parameters, will be adopted
in the future work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study is supported by The National High Tech-
nology Research and Development Program of China
(2013AA064502), Key Projects in the National Science &
Technology Pillar Program during the Twelfth Five-year Plan
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035114 (2015)
Period (2012BAK04B02) and The National Basic Research
Program of China (2013CB228004). The authors would like
to thank Professor Yongmin Zhang and Mr. Yunfei Liu for the
many useful suggestions and discussions.
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