2022 3rd International Conference on Electronic Communication and Artificial Intelligence (IWECAI)

Frequency Characteristics Analysis of Improved

Square PCB Rogowski Coil Used in Press-Pack IGBT
2022 3rd International Conference on Electronic Communication and Artificial Intelligence (IWECAI) | 978-1-6654-7997-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/IWECAI55315.2022.00031

Anqi Dai Zhongkang Lin

State Key Laboratory of Advanced State Key Laboratory of Advanced
Power Transmission Technology Power Transmission Technology
(Global Energy Interconnection (Global Energy Interconnection
Research Institute Co.,Ltd.) Research Institute Co.,Ltd.)
Beijing, China Beijing, China
82555301@qq.com xizihappyeveryday@qq.com

Shuai Sun Liang Wang

State Key Laboratory of Advanced State Key Laboratory of Advanced
Power Transmission Technology Power Transmission Technology
(Global Energy Interconnection (Global Energy Interconnection
Research Institute Co.,Ltd.) Research Institute Co.,Ltd.)
Beijing, China Beijing, China
245247801@qq.com 1393133802@qq.com

Xinling Tang Shi Fu*

State Key Laboratory of Advanced State Key Laboratory of Alternate
Power Transmission Technology Electrical Power System with
(Global Energy Interconnection Renewable Energy Sources (North
Research Institute Co.,Ltd.) China Electric Power University)
Beijing, China Beijing, China
18811592722@126.com * Corresponding author: fu_shi@126.com

Xuebao Li
State Key Laboratory of Alternate
Electrical Power System with
Renewable Energy Sources (North
China Electric Power University)
Beijing, China
lxb08357x@ncepu.edu.cn

Abstract—Printed circuit board Rogowski coil (PCB RC) has
been generally applied in conditions of fast switching speed like
power electronic devices, where the chips are arranged very close
to each other. For Press-Pack IGBT (Insulted Gate Bipolar
Transistor), the square Rogowski coil is very suitable to fit the
shape of pedestal because the space is limit to be embedded in
and the size of Rogowski coil is desired to be smaller. However,
the measurement accuracy of traditional square Rogowski coil is
not good enough since the wiring is not uniform, which causes big
error when the chip current gathers at the corners of pedestal. In
this paper, the improved square PCB RC is proposed to make the
mutual inductance inside the chip more evenly, thus the
measurement accuracy is improved significantly. The variation of
coil parameters with frequency is also studied through simulation
and experiment. The improved square Rogowski coil satisfies the
accuracy and bandwidth demand of Press-Pack IGBT and is very
suitable to be used in.
Keywords-IGBTs; square Rogowski coil; frequency
characteristics; mutual inductance; bandwidth; measurement
accuracy
I. INTRODUCTION
In many cases, Rogowski coil is commonly used to test
high alternating current or high current pulses [1-3]. The
printed circuit board Rogowski coil (PCB RC) has already been
applied in power devices and modules to test transient current
of chips due to the very small size, cheap price and rectangular
cross section [4]. Without regarding to the resistance, self-
capacitance and self-induction, the Rogowski coil works as a
transformer based on the law of electromagnetic induction [5].
The induced electromagnetic force is totally donated by the
mutual inductance between the primary conductor and the
Rogowski coil.

This study is supported by the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Power

Transmission Technology (Grant No. GEIRI-SKL-2020-007).

978-1-6654-7997-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE 116

DOI 10.1109/IWECAI55315.2022.00031

Authorized licensed use limited to: Industrial Technology Research Institute. Downloaded on February 15,2023 at 09:29:26 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 In order to embed into high power devices and occupy less
space, non-circular, especially rectangular cross sections of the
square PCB RC[6-7] have been developed. In particular, the
square Rogowski coil is better suited for chip current
measurement in the Press Pack IGBT because it fits the shape
of the base and maximizes space within the device [8]. The
mutual inductance positioning accuracy and the anti-
interference ability of rectangular PCB RC are both more
fragile than that of the circular coil, because the asymmetry of
the rectangular Rogowski coil makes it difficult to wind around
corners. J. Wang et al. [9] believed that the larger the number
of turns, the smaller the noise of adjacent busbars. In addition,
noise can be reduced by using a rectangular design coil with
rounded corners [10] or by varying the angular density of the
corner of the Rogowski coil [11]. In practical applications,
considering the need to reduce the size of Rogowski coils, non-
circular Rogowski coils are more suitable for the shape of
primary conductors. However, little research has been done so
far on the positioning accuracy and anti-interference capability
of non-circular Rogowski coils.
In this paper, the frequency characteristics of improved
square Rogowski coil is fully discussed based on calculation
and simulation, which makes it very suitable to be used in
press-pack IGBT.
II. MEASURING PRINCIPLES
As depicted in Fig.1, the Rogowski coil consists of a
hollow closed coil and an integrator. According to Faraday's
law of electromagnetic induction, when the measured current
passes through the hollow coil, both ends of the coil induce an
electromotive force, which is proportional to the differential of
the measured current, and the ratio can be described by the
mutual inductance of the two. The voltage at both ends of the
coil is then integrated through the integrating circuit. In the
measuring frequency band of the coil, the voltage integrating
signal is proportional to the measured current, and the
measured sensitivity is proportional to the mutual inductance of
the coil and the current-carrying conductor.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of Rogowski coil.
In addition, an ideal Rogowski coil should have a loop of
current-carrying wires of any shape passing through any
position inside the coil, the measured current is constant, and
the output voltage of the Rogowski coil is zero when the
current-carrying wires are located anywhere outside the coil.
From the perspective of the mutual inductance between the
Rogowski coil and the measured current, when the measured
current passes through the coil, the mutual inductance does not
117
Authorized licensed use limited to: Industrial Technology Research Institute. Downloaded on February 15,2023 at 09:29:26 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
change with the position of the measured current. When the
measured current does not pass inside the Rogowski coil, the
mutual inductance is 0.
However, the performance of Rogowski coil cannot be fully
characterized only by the mutual inductance parameters,
because the coil (especially PCB Rogowski coil) itself has ohm
resistance, and the coil's own inductance and capacitance will
make the coil resonant when its frequency reaches a certain
value, thus determining the upper limit of the coil bandwidth.
The circuit topology of Rogowski coil is shown in Fig. 2,
where M is the mutual inductance of the coil and current-
carrying conductor, R and L are the resistance and self-
inductance of the coil respectively, C' is the equivalent
capacitance of the coil, and C is the capacitance of the coil.
Figure 2. Equivalent circuit of PCB RC.
The transfer function of PCB RC is given by
(1)
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
The PCB Rogowski coils are suitable with chip current
measurement of crimped IGBT devices should be a square coil
in the shape of a fitting boss, as shown in Fig. 3(a). However,
for the traditional square coil in this winding mode, coils are
only distributed on the four edges adjacent to the boss, while
there is no coil distribution at the four corresponding angles of
the boss, which leads to serious discontinuity of coil
distribution in space. Such discontinuity of coil distribution
will lead to: 1) The mutual inductance distribution of current-
carrying wires in different positions corresponding to the coil is
not uniform; 2) When the current-carrying wire is outside the
coil and close to the coil, it will also produce a large mutual
inductance, which will introduce a large measurement error.
Therefore, it is necessary to improve the square coil in the
traditional layout by adding the coil at the corner, as shown in
Fig. 3(b).
Return 
Wire
Connecting u
Wire
 u
Winding
Wire
Pedestal
Pedestal
Return
Winding Wire
Wire
Connecting Wire
(a) traditional square PCB RC (b) improved square PCB RC
Figure 3. Comparison between the structures of traditional and improved
square PCB RCs
 The long straight current-carrying wire is located in
different positions inside the traditional square coil and the
improved square coil. The relationship between the mutual
inductance of the long straight current-carrying wire and the
coil with the change of position is shown in Fig. 4. For
conventional square coils, the mutual inductance decreases
rapidly when the current-carrying wire is near the inner Angle
of the coil, resulting in a measurement error of up to 13% when
the current-carrying wire is located at the inner Angle of the
coil compared to when the current-carrying wire is located at
the center of the coil. Because the improved square coil is
optimized at the four corners of the winding, the measurement
(a) Q3D model of improved PCB RC
error caused by the inner corner of the coil is reduced to 3%,
which improves the measurement accuracy by 4 times
compared to the traditional square coil.

Inductance (nH)
Resistance (¡)
Mutual inductance (nH)

Frequency (Hz)
y (mm) x (mm) (b) Resistance and inductance of PCB RC under different frequencies
(a) traditional square PCB RC Figure 5. Extract parameters of improved square PCB RC

It can be seen that when the frequency is less than 1MHz,

Mutual inductance (nH)

the resistance and self-inductance of Rogowski coil almost do

not change with the frequency. When the frequency is 5MHz,
the coil resistance increases to 3.15 Ω, an increase of 11%, and
the coil self-inductance decreases to 474nH, a decrease of only
1.2%. The capacitance of the coil almost does not change with
frequency in the whole frequency band of the simulation. The
three parameters of the coil at 1MHz are shown in Tab. 1.

TABLE I. CIRCUIT PARAMETERS OF IMPROVED SQUARE PCB RC

y (mm) x (mm) Resistance(Ω) Inductance(nH) Capacity(pF)

(b) improved square PCB RC
Figure 4. Comparison between the mutual inductance with primary wire
inside traditional and improved square PCB RCs
The CAD model of the improved square Rogowski coil was
imported into the finite element simulation software Q3D
Extractor, and the coil resistance, self-inductance and
capacitance parameters were extracted at 8 frequency points
ranging from 1Hz to 10MHz, as shown in Figure 9(b).
2.85 479 0.904
According to the three circuit parameters given in Tab. 1,
the resonant frequency of the proposed square coil fr=380MHz
can be calculated. Meanwhile, the Bode diagram of the coil
itself is given, as shown in Fig. 6. In the amplitude-frequency
characteristic, the amplitude of 3dB corresponds to the upper
limit of the coil bandwidth of 209MHz, which is about half of
the resonant frequency of 380MHz. Since the transient rise and
fall times of crimped IGBT devices are in the order of hundreds
of nanoseconds, the bandwidth of the coil is sufficient for
accurate measurement of chip current.

118

Authorized licensed use limited to: Industrial Technology Research Institute. Downloaded on February 15,2023 at 09:29:26 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 Improved Measurement
PCB RC 380MHz Simulation

3dB 209MHz

Frequency (Hz)
(b) Phase-frequency characteristic
Figure 8. Frequency Characteristics of improved square PCB RC

It can be seen that when the frequency is 100kHz and below,

Figure 6. Bode diagram of improved square PCB RC
IV. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
Meanwhile, impedance analyzer was used to measure the
amplitude-frequency and phase-frequency characteristics of the
impedance of the improved square Rogowski coil. The
experimental test figure is shown in Fig. 7, and the comparison
between the measurement results and simulation results is
shown in Fig. 8.
Figure 7. Impedance analyzer test diagram.
Measurement
Simulation
the impedance characteristics of Rogowski coil are mainly
represented by its resistance characteristics. It can be seen that
the resistance measured at this time is significantly greater than
the simulation result, which is mainly caused by the inevitable
introduction of contact resistance when the coil is connected to
the test fixture in the measurement process. When the
frequency is less than 40MHz, the amplitude-frequency
characteristics of the coil measured and simulated are in good
agreement with the phase-frequency characteristics. When the
frequency is greater than 40MHz, the measurement and
simulation results show a significant difference, possibly due to
the parasitic capacitance introduced by the coil and fixture.
Because the upper limit of the measurement frequency of the
impedance analyzer is only 110MHz, the resonant point of the
coil has not appeared in the measurement process, so the
resonant frequency of the coil should be greater than 110MHz.
With long straight wire through the center of the coil, pass
to f = 1 MHz frequency sinusoidal current, the output voltage
of the coil, by measuring the coil output voltage and primary
side current amplitude, it is easy to take the current-carrying
conductor and the mutual inductance coil, and assuming that
the original edge wire for infinite length calculation results
such as shown in Tab. II, the calculated value was 10% larger
than the measured value, The deviation is caused by the
calculated infinite length wire approximation and the Rogowski
coil PCB thickness process, which is unavoidable when
measuring the primary current with a commercial current
sensor and the output voltage of the coil with a voltage probe.

TABLE II. COMPARISON BETWEEN CALCULATION AND MEASUREMENT

RESULTS OF IMPROVED SQUARE PCB RC

Measurenment Calculation Error

Mutual
Inductance
4.06nH 4.47nH 10%

V. CONCLUSION

Frequency (Hz) Compared to the traditional square PCB RC, the winding
turns are continuous at the corners for improved square PCB
(a) Amplitude-frequency characteristic
RC, which enhances the positional accuracy greatly. Since the
mutual inductance inside the chip is more evenly, the
measurement accuracy is improved significantly. The

119

Authorized licensed use limited to: Industrial Technology Research Institute. Downloaded on February 15,2023 at 09:29:26 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 positional accuracy is doubled for improved square PCB RC
based on simulation results. And the variation of coil
parameters with frequency is also studied through simulation
and experiment. The improved square Rogowski coil satisfies
the accuracy and greatly exceeds the bandwidth demand of
Press-Pack IGBT and reach to 209MHz, therefor the improved
square PCB RC is very suitable to be used in Press-Pack IGBT
to measure the transient chip current.
REFERENCES
[1] Q. Xiong, X. Feng, A. L. Gattozzi et al., "Series Arc Fault Detection and
Localization in DC Distribution System," IEEE Transactions on
Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 122 -134, 2020, doi:
10.1109/TIM.2019.2890892.
[2] M. Koga et al, "Application-specific micro Rogowski coil for power
modules - Design tool, novel coil pattern and demonstration," in CIPS
2016; 9th International Conference on Integrated Power Electronics
Systems, 8-10 March 2016 2016, pp. 1-5.
[3] A. Mingotti, L et al, "Effects of Multiple Influence Quantities on
Rogowski-Coil-Type Current Transformers," IEEE Transactions on
Instrumentation and Measurement, pp. 1-1, 2019, doi:
10.1109/TIM.2019.2953419.
[4] P.-Y. Gu, Q. Chen, H.-B. Li, C. Hu, H. Gong, and Y. Jiao, "PCB
Rogowski Coils for 300 kA Current Measurement on a Multi-Split
Conductor," IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 19, no. 16, pp. 6786 -6794, 2019,
doi: 10.1109/jsen.2019.2914730.
[5] D. Gerber, T. Guillod, R et al, "Gate Unit With Improved Short-Circuit
Detection and Turn-Off Capability for 4.5-kV Press-Pack IGBTs
120
Authorized licensed use limited to: Industrial Technology Research Institute. Downloaded on February 15,2023 at 09:29:26 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Operated at 4-kA Pulse Current," IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science,
vol. 41, no. 10, pp. 2641-2648, 2013, doi: 10.1109/tps.2013.2280379.
[6] B. Bayarkhuu, B. Bat-Ochir, K. Hasegawa, M. Tsukuda, B. Dugarjav,
and I. Omura, "Analog Basis, Low-Cost Inverter Output Current Sensing
with Tiny PCB Coil Implemented inside IPM," in 2019 31st
International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs
(ISPSD), 19-23 May 2019 2019, pp. 251-254.
[7] K. Wang, X. Yang, H. Li, L. Wang, and P. Jain, "A High-Bandwidth
Integrated Current Measurement for Detecting Switching Current of Fast
GaN Devices," IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 33, no. 7,
pp. 6199-6210, 2018, doi: 10.1109/tpel.2017.2749249.
[8] M. Tsukuda, M. Koga, K. Nakashima, and I. Omura, "Micro PCB
Rogowski coil for current monitoring and protection of high voltage
power modules," (in English), Microelectronics Reliability, vol. 64, pp.
479-483, Sep 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.microrel.2016.07.011.
[9] C. Jiao, J. Zhang, Z. Zhao, Z. Zhang, and Y. Fan, "Research on Small
Square PCB Rogowski Coil Measuring Transient Current in the Power
Electronics Devices," Sensors (Basel), vol. 19, no. 19, Sep 26 2019, doi:
10.3390/s19194176.
[10] X. Y. Liu, H. Huang, Y. H. Cui, Y. N. Dai, and X. Liu, "Mutual
Inductance Between Arbitrary Conductor and Rogowski Coil With
Circular Skeleton and Gap Compensation," (in English), IEEE Sensors
Journal, vol. 19, no. 11, pp. 4106-4114, Jun 1 2019, doi:
10.1109/Jsen.2019.2896443.
[11] J. Wang, Z. Shen, R. Burgos, and D. Boroyevich, "Design of a high-
bandwidth Rogowski current sensor for gate-drive shortcircuit protection
of 1.7 kV SiC MOSFET power modules," in WiPDA 2015 - 3rd IEEE
Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices and Applications, 2015, pp.
104-107.