480 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 51, NO.

3, JUNE 2002

Mitigation of Ground Loop Effects in High-Voltage

Measurements
A. P. J. van Deursen, Senior Member, IEEE, and J. B. M. van Waes

Abstract—Ground loops can affect voltage measurement sys-

tems, in particular those in high-power test circuits. The net or
common-mode current through the signal cable shield induces in-
terference in the signal circuit. A generalized transfer impedance
describes this undesired coupling. In a low-frequency circuit
model, decomposes into two terms which vary with the cable
length and with 2 , respectively. Several divider setups are dis-
cussed; all employ the same high-voltage arm. The position and
composition of the low-voltage arm vary. A proper design of the
signal circuit ensures a low at the power frequency. Measure-
ments confirm the model. With the low , the direct capacitive
coupling between the high-voltage arm and neighboring circuits
showed up as a comparable interference source.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic compatibility, ground loop,
high-voltage measurement, transfer impedance.
Fig. 1. Sketch of a test setup in a high power laboratory with a voltage
measurement system. The three current loops are discussed in the text.
I. INTRODUCTION

V OLTAGE measurement systems in high-power and high-

voltage (HV) laboratories reduce the high voltage to a
level suitable for the registration equipment. The required ac-
lie in such a plane. Parallel HV circuits may couple in through
mutual inductance or capacitance. Still, the voltage in the TL re-
mains well defined, and the measuring system should faithfully
curacy and linearity are typically 1 % at low frequencies, and
reproduce this voltage. On the other hand, a parasitic capaci-
the 3 dB bandwidth should be at least 1 MHz. The measure-
tance between a neighboring phase and the HV arm of the
ment system should cope with the disturbances generated in
divider produces a signal that is a real interference, since it is
the test setup, in particular those at the power frequency. Inter-
not determined by the voltage in the actual TL.
ference couples in at three places: the HV divider, the signal
Loop b: In the literature, several cable models exist which
cable, and the registration equipment. We start with a particular
differ in the choice of the current loops b and c. Here, we chose
divider HV arm, and compare several combinations of cables
the following: The intended signal current flows through the
and low-voltage (LV) terminations. All offer the same signal
inner conductor of the cable and returns through the shield. In
transfer; their interference rejection varies greatly.
EMC terminology, this is the differential mode (DM) current
Fig. 1 shows a typical test setup in a high-power laboratory.
loop.
The generator feeds a line connected to a high-power switch as
Loop c: The signal cable shield and the grounding circuit in
equipment under test (EUT); only a single phase is shown. The
the neighborhood form the common-mode (CM) loop. There is
HV divider close to the switch is composed of and . A
a strong resistive and magnetic coupling with loop a, in partic-
coaxial cable transports the signal over to the control room
ular near the divider and the test setup. This coupling causes a
(CR); there terminates the cable. The three relevant current
net current through the cable, which flows in the shield. On
loops are a) the loop of the primary HV circuit, b) the signal loop
its turn, induces an interference voltage in loop b through
composed of the cable and its terminations at both ends, and c)
the shield resistance which the loops b and c share. One may
the ground loop formed by the cable shield and the grounding
opt to interrupt the ground loop, for instance at in the con-
structures in its environment.
trol room, and thereby to block ; see Fig. 1. Over this inter-
Loop a: This transmission line (TL) supports a transverse
ruption a CM voltage appears, which may be particularly large
electromagnetic wave. A unique voltage ex-
during fast switching events or failures of the EUT. Then, the
ists only in a plane perpendicular to that TL. The hot 1) and cold
registration equipment should have a large common-mode re-
end 2) of the divider, and the path between 1 and 2 should all
jection, which floating electronics or an optical link can provide.
A flash-over in the control room due to the large CM voltages
Manuscript received February 23, 2001; revised April 2, 2002. should be avoided at all times. Another approach is to connect
The authors are with the Eindhoven University of Technology, Department the signal cable shield to the ground at both ends, and to accept
of Electrical Engineering, Group Electrical Power Systems, Eindhoven, The
Netherlands. a large . This calls for a DM circuit design highly immune
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9456(02)05885-0. to .
0018-9456/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE
VAN DEURSEN AND VAN WAES: MITIGATION OF GROUND LOOP EFFECTS 481

Modern equipment includes high-speed digital data

recorders. The apparatus is mounted in a so-called EMC-cab-
inet, which routes the around the sensitive electronics
inside. Such a cabinet has been proposed by [1]; [2] also gives
details. In fact, it is quite possible to engineer the entire control
room as an EMC cabinet.
Section II briefly describes several systems with respect to
the signal transfer in the frequency domain. The full algebraic
analysis is presented in the Appendix. Section III deals with the
general behavior of the interference coupling and with the as-
sociated corner frequencies. The discussion can be extended to
other dividers, series – , purely resistive or purely capaci-
tive, and also to capacitive sensors. Section IV discusses exper-
imental data on the effect of the parasitic in comparison to
the interference. The numerical examples refer to a partic-
ular high-voltage arm with M and pF in
parallel. KEMA High Power Laboratory kindly supplied us this
large and expensive component for the experiments. The corner
frequency is Hz, with the time constant
. The divider ratio is a practical value
for the KEMA registration equipment. The cable length is 60
m, and its characteristic impedance is . The cable di-
electric has a relative permittivity , which leads to a cable
capacitance pF/m with the speed Fig. 2. Three setups for the voltage measurement.
of light in vacuum. The shield resistance of the coaxial signal
cables is in /m; a value of /m is used. The
primes indicate that and are quantities per unit length. TABLE I
COMPONENTS OF Z AND Z IN THE SETUPS OF FIG. 2

II. SIGNAL TRANSFER

Fig. 2 shows three different setups. Setup I employs a single

cable; two versions are discussed. In setup II, a second cable fur-
ther reduces the interference induced by a low-frequency .
Setup III with a single cable provides a similar immunity against
this interference. The varies between the setups. The ele-
ments of then follow from a pole-zero cancellation proce-
dure in order to satisfy the requirement that the divider ratio
high-frequency roll-off if ; see the Appendix.
is independent of frequency. Furthermore it is desirable that
A slightly larger than in Table I may also compensate for
converges to at high frequency in order to avoid reflections
signal damping in the cable due to the skin effect.
in the signal cable. Table I shows the calculated values derived
II: At high frequencies, the cold side of is grounded near
from the full algebraic equations presented in the Appendix. Ex-
the test setup through the capacitor F. A second
planations follow hereafter.
cable runs parallel to the signal cable. At power frequencies and
Ia: In the classical divider, ensures the full reduction, or
below, the second cable moves the divider grounding point to the
. The large capacitance should be selected
control room, and thereby reduces the interference induced by
for a small parasitic inductance, and for its capability to with-
[4]1 ; see explanations in Section III. The resistor
stand large . The terminating is the input impedance
terminates the second cable. The network is identical to the
of the measuring equipment, which is often large compared to
one of setup Ib.
. Cable resonance may be damped by a 50 resistor inserted
IIIa: Now is omitted. Resistor determines the dc di-
in front of the cable input, at point in Fig. 2 (Part I).
vider ratio. At high frequency, in parallel with acts as
Ib: In another approach [3], is 100 times larger, or
proper cable termination. For frequencies , this setup
. The value of is not critical for the signal transfer, be-
is an example of the differentiating/integrating measurement
cause now the network acts as the final LV arm. Resistor
system [5]. The differentiation is carried out by and ,
determines the dc divider ratio. Resistors terminate
up to the corner frequency , which is about 21 MHz.
the cable properly for frequencies higher than
kHz. The capacitor compensates the time constant of 1Prior to this research, a differential measurement setup for current shunts
provided ; should be a low-in- with two cables was desigened at Siemens High Power Laboratory, Berlin, Ger-
ductance type. The small resistor corrects an undesirable many.
482 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 51, NO. 3, JUNE 2002

The combination of and forms the required integrator if

.
IIIb: A steep HV wavefront at the input causes a large current
through into the cable, which may overstress the cable insu-
lation and cause nonlinearity in the resistors of the network.
As an example, a 50 cable termination, composed of three
2 W 150 carbon composition resistor, survives a 50 kV 1.2/50
s pulse, when the resistors are mounted in shrink sleeves. The
resistance decreases by 6 % during a 5 kV pulse of 10/100 ns,
and by 12 % with a similar 10 kV pulse [6]. A small valued ca- Fig. 3. Short cable model for the interference coupling. Both R =2 resistors
pacitor across the cable input adequately avoids these non- represent the shield resistance; the distributed cable capacitance C is shown as
linear effects. The resistor in series with as in setup Ib a single lumped element.
can be omitted if the impedance of and in parallel re-
mains larger than at the highest frequency of interest. With second contribution involves the cable capacitance, and is
nF, the corner frequency is still 1.5 MHz. obtained by calculation of
IIIc and d: One may choose ; this results in a
larger dc divider ratio . The integrator resistor can
then have a large value; the correspondingly smaller can be (4)
selected for good high-frequency behavior. In setup IIId, the
small is added again. We introduce as a short notation for the impedances
and in parallel. For all setups, the last fraction in
III. INTERFERENCE BY the right-hand side of (4) can readily be approximated by

Fig. 3 shows the simplified circuit model for the interference

coupling in the setups I and III; is set equal to zero. The (5)
distributed cable capacitance is lumped into a single capacitor
placed at mid-cable. This model is valid below 300 which has the absolute value of 1. If is high compared to ,
kHz, so that the wavelength . The interference coupling is proportional to the square of the cable length, because
scales with . In view of the limited frequency band of interest, both and scale with . Vance [7, pp. 147–150] derived
we first disregard the skin effect in the shield and the magnetic the coupling into cables starting from traveling waves in the
coupling through openings in the shield. These coupling effects DM and the CM circuits. The Appendix presents and as
are included at the end of this Section, by replacing by the the first two terms in the Taylor expansion of this coupling for
frequency-dependent transfer impedance of the cable. The . The frequency dependence of , and is given
resistance of setup Ia at A (Fig. 3) is omitted for the sake of in Fig. 4. For our numerical example and the component values
simplicity. A generalized transfer impedance relates and of Table I, the corner frequencies are well separated and simple
approximations hold. In the expressions for , we omit the last
fraction (4) and give the value for instead. The frequencies
(1) which correspond to the time constants are marked
on the horizontal axes in Fig. 4.
The solution of the network equations pertaining to Fig. 3 results Setup Ia: Because of the large , the full appears over
in the cable output and . Fig. 4(a) shows both and
divided by a factor of 100. For one finds
(2)

Here, is the attenuation of the network,

is the resistance of the shield, is the impedance of (6)
and in parallel, and is the impedance
of the cable capacitance. The total may be split into two which defines the time constants . Because is very large, (5)
contributions. The first acts through the common resistance equals 1. One should substitute in (6) when the extra
directly. In the limit of , (2) reduces to resistor is absent at the cable input (A in Fig. 2I). The linear rise
of until , is then followed by a flat which remains
less than times . With the resistor, ,
(3) starts to rise again at kHz and tends to for
MHz. At these high frequencies limits the
This coupling is proportional to . In a simplified model, current through .
the interference voltage induced in the signal loop Setup Ib: Now is multiplied by the factor . As
ABCDF may be localized in the shield CD or in the line BC. The a result, is 100 times smaller than in setup
VAN DEURSEN AND VAN WAES: MITIGATION OF GROUND LOOP EFFECTS 483

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

(e) (f)
Fig. 4. Behavior of jZ j (—), jZ j (-.-) and jZ j (- -) as function of frequency in Hz, for the different setups in (a)-(c), (e), and (f) with numerical values of
the example in Section I. The cross-over frequencies are discussed in the text. The vertical axes are in Ohms. Part d shows the interference to signal ratio ISR
calculated in a transmission line model.

Ia. The current flows predominantly through , and Setup II: When both shielded cables are twisted, we may ne-
behaves similarly as in setup Ia without , or glect the time-varying magnetic flux through the loop formed
by both cable shields (CC D D in Fig. 2II). The values of
are then identical for both cables. At dc or very low fre-
quency, can be disregarded; the low-voltage side of is
(7) effectively grounded in the control room through . Discon-
nect for the moment , and consider the signal loop in Fig. 2II
and . Around MHz the impedance made up of , internal conductor FA, , internal conductor
of becomes comparable to , which is then about AF, and line ED . Both cable shields, and thus both are
. The decreases slightly until MHz. absent in this signal loop; this leads to . With con-
484 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 51, NO. 3, JUNE 2002

nected again, only the part of appears over . The

improvement over setup Ib is another factor of 100. At high fre-
quencies grounds at the EUT, and approaches setup
Ib, or

(8)

(9)

In an alternative explanation for , one considers the loop

which includes the upper signal cable shield: , line BC, shield
CD, , internal conductor FA, and . The voltage in this
loop appears mainly over and . The same is induced
in the similar loop containing the lower cable: , the shield
CD, , and the internal conductor F A . The major part of
this appears over at frequencies . This quasi
Fig. 5. Upper curve, left ordinate: Measured (o) and calculated (—) Z in

“bootstrap” reduces the -induced current through and thus f<

for setup II. The straight line (- - -) at 100 Hz indicates the calculated
. residualZ whenZ 2
is disconnected; the measured data are shown by . The
The capacitive current in the upper signal cable flows pre- f>
nearly straight line (- - -) at Z
10 kHz represents the calculated for a
dominantly through , and the one in the lower cable through Z
resistive R
= ; the solid line there has been obtained from the actual Z
measured separately on a short cable sample. Lower curve and right ordinate
or . behaves similarly to setup Ib, which is (7). In the shifted over a factor of 5: The same data for setup IIIa. The length of all RG214
numerical example, the linear rise with frequency of over- cables was 20 m.
takes the still constant at the cross-over frequency
Hz; becomes larger than again at by the propagation effects in the cables. At lower frequencies,
kHz. A smaller would shift the ISR results are in perfect agreement with the simple models
, and upwards. presented above.
Setups III: A similar reduction in low-frequency can be The has been measured for setups II and IIIa with 20
obtained with a single signal cable if one removes , and in m long, double braided RG214 cables. A sinewave generator
particular , or provided the current . A lock-in detector placed in an EMC
cabinet measured the voltage over the frequency range
5 Hz–500 kHz. The lower limit was 0.3 ; the accuracy
was 10 percent or better. Small components and re-
placed the HV arm; and were mounted in a shielded box
connected to the current source. The long cables were wound
around a 0.6 m diameter aluminum tube, which provided
In setup IIIa, one has and up to
support and a well-defined return path for the injection current.
MHz which is out of scale in Fig. 4(e). With the values
Both shielded cables of setup II were twisted. Fig. 5 shows that
nF of setup IIIb, bends upward at Hz,
the of both setups compares well with the TL calculations.
levels off at times the dc value at , and bends
Above 50 kHz, the of the RG214 decreases below the dc
downward again at MHz; see Fig. 4(f). Again, is
resistance . Separate measurements on a short cable resulted
similar to setup Ib, or (7), with and . The
in the actual complex , which has been implemented. We
and become equal at the plateau when , which
also disconnected in setup II. The remaining interference
results in a factor of two increase of the total . A still larger
signal decreased linearly with frequency for down to
increases the plateau further, to merge with the of Setup Ib
the lowest measured frequency of 5.8 Hz (dashes with curve
if nF. However, the low-frequency leveling-off of
II in Fig. 5). This signal originated from and to a minor
remains fixed at , and its dc value is also fixed. Consequently,
extent from .
shifts to lower values, and the total at power frequency
rises. Setups IIIb and d behave similarly to a and c.
Some of the corner frequencies given above are outside the IV. ADDITIONAL REMARKS
range of validity of the short cable model. The coupled trans- In some practical installations, one can choose to ground
mission line model of [8] accounts for the finite propagation the cold side of with the signal cable shield at some other,
velocities in the cables and in the ground loop. Fig. 4(d) shows perhaps far away “reference” point out of the perpendicular
the results, presented as the interference to signal ratio (ISR) plane. This choice extends the voltage measuring path. The
for the same numerical values as in the examples before. The measured signal then contains contributions due to external
ISR is the response of the system to a CM current of 1 A, di- currents through a common resistance and magnetic flux
vided by the response to the HV signal of 1 V. For system II, variations in the loop formed by the divider and its leads, and
both cables carry 1 A. The value of system Ia is out of range in by the ground path between the far point and the HV circuit.
Fig. 4(d), about . The roll-off above 300 kHz is now caused These contributions should be sufficiently small compared to
VAN DEURSEN AND VAN WAES: MITIGATION OF GROUND LOOP EFFECTS 485

TABLE II APPENDIX
RESPONSE IN kV OF THE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM WITH SETUP IIIa AND THE
HV ARM PLACED NEAR A 50 Hz RESONANT SYSTEM
Tuning
For system Ia, one should obviously select equal RC time con-
stants for and . For the other setups, the signal transfer is
found in a straightforward solution of the equations pertaining to
the circuits in Fig. 2. Assuming a very short cable, one arrives at

. It may happen that the “far reference” results in less CM

current through the cable than the LV grounding point under with the divider ratio, the impedance of , and
the HV arm, which simulates a “quiet ground” in particular if in parallel, and the attenuation of the network.
is large. For setup Ib, reduces to a fraction of two second-degree poly-
The resistor limits the integration by . This is required nomials in angular frequency
for the intended signal, but this is less desirable if other coupling
paths for interference also exist. For instance, a local near the
input of the registration equipment will likely have a mutual in-
ductance part. High-frequency interference will couple in there. with
An additional lowpass filter at the input of the equipment is rec-
ommended.
In actual test labs, CM currents of tens of amperes at power
frequency are not uncommon. In the example, a CM current
of 10 A is equivalent to a reading of 300 V in system Ib.
Setups II and III have about 10 V interference. It is interesting and
to compare these data with the coupling through the parasitic
capacitance in Fig. 1. The porcelain housing of the divider
is about 2 m high, and has a diameter of about 0.5 m. It
was placed at 3 m from a 50 Hz resonant HV system set at
120 kV. Four copper leads distributed over the circumference
of the HV divider may connect the top of the arm to the
conducting ground underneath. A metal grid could also be where and . The impedance of the
installed as a shield around the HV arm. Table II shows the parallel vertical arms of in Fig. 2I is written as
response of setup IIIa in the four possible situations. The small
common-mode currents generated negligible interference in
these measurements. The data indicate that the coupling
will be the next important source of interference in a test which defines the time constants and . In the main text,
lab, if setups II or III is installed. is chosen as , and consequently . The condi-
Other methods to reduce the over the cables are avail- tion of a frequency-independent transfer and a termination of
able, for instance careful routing, or conduits for the cables the cable at high frequency into its characteristic impedance ,
which form a bypass for . Such mitigation measured is also determines all components. Because the ratio does not
discussed in [2] and [9]. depend on , the resistors follow from the simultaneous solu-
tion of

V. CONCLUSION
A generalized transfer impedance describes the interfer- and
ence coupling into the voltage measuring system through the
cable shield, induced by the common-mode current. In the anal-
ysis decomposes into a term which varies linearly with
the cable length , and a term , which depends on be- The capacitor then follows from . A little com-
cause it also involves the cable capacitance. The circuit design puter algebra resulted in the values of Table I, where we took
strongly influences ; is similar for the setups studied. and . Note that
Setup III has the best , in particular, if is absent. At low holds accurately. Both resistors can be realized by a 50 poten-
or power frequency, setup II has a comparable low . In both tiometer with connected to the tap. The constant depends
setups, the shields of the measuring cables can then be grounded linearly on , and determines the flat transfer at high fre-
at both ends, without introducing intolerable interference caused quency.
by the ground loop. This two-sided grounding avoids the occur- In practice, may be selected at some fixed value close to
rence of CM voltages at the registration equipment in the control but not exactly equal to the one in Table I. One then relaxes the
room. requirement of a predetermined divider ratio, and adjusts the
486 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 51, NO. 3, JUNE 2002

(10)

resistors for frequency-independent transfer. For the particular respect to the term with . After correction for , one
choice , the transfer is mainly determined by arrives at
and . Large deviations from the value given in the Table
can be accommodated by minor adjustment of the elements. (11)
In setup II, the lower cable can be neglected for the signal
transfer because is large compared to in parallel with which is equivalent to (4) in the main text, except that is
. The elements have been chosen as for setup Ib. In setup replaced by because in (11) the distributed character of
III the elements are arranged differently. The algebraic anal- is properly taken into account.
ysis results in
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank A. L. J. Janssen of KEMA High Power
and because there is no resistor in series with . Laboratory who instigated this research and lent us the divider
The constants in the denominator are HV component and W. A. van der Linden (also at KHPL), who
kindly informed us about setup II which he installed at KEMA.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the stimulating discussions
with P. C. T. van der Laan.

REFERENCES
with
[1] M. A. van Houten, E. J. M. van Heesch, A. P. J. van Deursen, R.
G. Noij, J. N. A. M. van Rooij, and P. C. T. van der Laan, “General
methods for the protection of electronics against interferences, tested
in high-voltage substations,” in Proc. 8th Int. Symp. Electromagn.
which defines the time constants and for setup III. Be- Compat., Zürich, Switzerland, Feb. 1997, p. 429.
cause , a high-frequency roll-off occurs. For the compo- [2] IEC Tech. Rep. 61 000-5-2, .
nent values chosen, the corresponding corner frequency of about [3] G. C. Damstra and Z. Matyáš, “ Improvement of dividers for fast and
very fast HV transients,” in Proc. ERA Conf. Meas. Calibration High
is above the frequency band of interest. Voltage Testing, London, U.K., Oct. 1998, paper 2.4.
[4] W. A. van der Linden, private communication.
Alternative Derivation of [5] G. G. Wolzak, “Development of high voltage measuring techniques,”
Ph.D. dissertation, Eindhoven Univ. Technol., Eindhoven, The Nether-
Vance [7] considers a shielded cable extending in the -direc- lands, 1983.
tion between and , subjected to a parallel electric field . [6] S. G. Bosga, “Alineair gedrag van een afsluitweerstand (Non-linear
behavior of a terminating resistor),” Eindhoven Technical Univ., The
The propagation constant in the cable is . Ref. [7, Eq. (5.57b)] Netherlands, Rep. EH.91.S.269, 1991.
gives the internal current into the cable termination at posi- [7] E. F. Vance, Coupling to Shielded Cables. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-
tion . A common-mode current of unit amplitude travels Intersience, 1978.
[8] A. R. Djordjević and T. K. Sarkar, “Analysis of time response of lossy
along the cable with propagation constant . We replace by multiconductor transmission line networks,” IEEE Trans. Microwave
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The current into the load becomes (10) as shown at the [9] A. P. J. van Deursen, F. B. M. van Horck, M. J. A. M. van Helvoort, and
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A. P. J. van Deursen (SM’98) received the M.S. degree in experimental physics

and the Ph.D. degree in 1976 on a thesis entitled “Experimental Investigation
on Small Clusters” from the Nijmegen Catholic University, The Netherlands.
are the reflection coefficients at both cable ends. To arrive at the In 1976, he started to investigate the electronic structure of metals and semi-
overall , one should still multiply by . The first-order conductors by means of very high magnetic fields, continuous and pulsed, first
term in the Taylor expansion of (10) with respect to the length for over a year at the Max-Planck Institute, Grenoble, France, and then at The
Nijmegen University. Since 1986, he has been a Lecturer on electromagnetic
leads to (3). The second-order term of the right-hand side in compatibility at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.
(10) is
J. B. M. van Waes was born in Breda, The Netherlands, in 1973. In October
1996, he received the M.Sc. degree from the Eindhoven University of Tech-
nology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
The first part with cancels when is regarded as a In December 1997, he continued as a Ph.D. student in a cooperation with
standing wave, or two waves with in opposite directions. NUON. As a researcher, he worked on a multimedia course in EMC, and on
various projects related to grounding for industry at the Eindhoven University of
In the second part, one has . The term Technology. At present, he is s with the company Holland Railconsult, Utrecht,
in the numerator of the last fraction can be neglected with The Netherlands.