J. R. Salas, Non Member, IEEE, G. Chakam, Member, IEEE, P.
The BCM has an asymmetric dipole
Moreno, Member, IEEE and A. Gómez, Member, IEEE
1
Study of the Effect of
the Wiring Harnesses on
the Radiation Patterns:
Part I: Wires Connected
to the BCM
Abstract—The purpose of this paper is to show how the
radiation pattern and the gain of an asymmetric dipole antenna
inside a vehicle and attached to a Body Control Module
(BCM) are modified by the connection condition of the wiring
harnesses. Measurement of the radiation pattern and the gain
on the whole vehicle was performed inside and anechoic
chamber. Measurements were compared against numerical
results obtained with the Method of Moments of the
electromagnetic software FEKO.
Index Terms— Asymmetric dipole antenna, Radiation
Patterns, Gain, Body Control Module, Wiring harnesses,
electromagnetic coupling.
I. INTRODUCTION
I
n the automotive-domain industries, the effect of vehicle
wiring harnesses on the performance of Body Control
Modules is an important topic because wiring can affect
the function of the BCM. Some problems that can appear
are: instability of the resonance frequency and input reflection
coefficient and instability of the radiation pattern. Moreover,
since system performance partly depends on the harness
guidance, these problems can lead to a system breakdown.
The BCM is an important device used in automobiles because
it controls some electrical and electronic parts such as car
alarm, doors aperture, monitoring of tires pressure, control
1 Incluir filiación en este párrafo:
J. R. Salas es estudiante de doctorado en el
CINVESTAV unidad Gdl. Zapopan Jalisco (e-mail:
jsalas@gdl.cinvestav.mx).
G. Chakam labora en la compañía Continental en
Regensburg, Alemania. (email: Guy-
Aymar.Chakam@continental-corporation.com)
P.Moreno es profesor investigador del Cinvestav
Unidad Gdl. Zapopan Jalisco. (e-mail:
pmoreno@gdl.cinvestav.mx).
A. Gómez labora en la compañía Continental en Guadalajara,
Jalisco. (e-mail: alfredo.gomez-pelayo@continental-
corporation.com)
panel operation, etc.
antenna consisting of a ground plane and a trace called
antenna element made of copper. Both copper parts are built
on a dielectric material (FR4). Several works have been
focused to the study of the performance of antennas inside
vehicles or located on some parts as rear view window or tires
[1-7]. One important characteristic of automotive antennas are
the resultant radiation patterns, because these patterns indicate
the strength and directions of the electromagnetic field
radiated by antennas or scatters. Some researches concerning
radiation patterns were done in [8-10]. In those works the
vehicle wiring harnesses were not considered. As mentioned
before, the wiring harnesses can affect the performance of
BCMs but also the performance of antennas because the
wiring is large (about 1 or 2 meters) and then electromagnetic
coupling might occur. In [11] the authors evaluated the RF-
emissions generated by vehicle cable harnesses. Specifically,
they presented some practical solutions to the problem of
reproducibility of emission tests in automotive systems. In
[12] a MoM-based EM code to model the electromagnetic
fields coupled to a vehicle by nearby lightning returns strokes
was developed. In this work the return stroke model was
applied to investigate the effect of the lightning induced
electromagnetic fields on vehicle wire harness. In [13] the
coupling from different locations of the cable harness to the
build-in radio antenna by mean of transfer function was
investigated. Here several transfer functions were measured
with a network analyzer in different cars.
The aim of this paper is to show how the radiation patterns
and the gain are modified when the wiring harnesses are
connected to or disconnected from the ground plane of the
BCM used by a car sedan from Renault. Numerical calculation
for both case were done with the electromagnetic software
FEKO  [14] and for validating the simulations they were
compared with measurements. The measurements of the
radiation patterns were done on a vehicle inside an anechoic
chamber. This work was done with the support of the
Continental Automotive AG Company and the Renault
Company.
II. BCM AND WIRING HARNESS
The BCM and the wiring harnesses used in the simulations
and measurements are shown in the Figures 1-3. Fig. 1(a)
shows the BCM inside the car with the wiring harnesses
disconnected from the BCM. The BCM is located inside a
plastic box commonly called the housing. For the car sedan,
six harnesses are connected to the BCM by mean of
connectors. The BCM is located near the wheel and metallic
elements of high conductivity. Consequently it can be
considered the BCM is above a perfect electric conducting
(PEC) ground plane. Figure 1(b) shows the BCM FEKO
model used for electromagnetic numerical calculations.
 integrals. The integral and radiation equations resolved by
Feko are revised in the appendix.

IV. RADIATION PATTERN MEASUREMENTS

PROCEDURE
The measurements were carried out within an anechoic
chamber to avoid interferences from external electromagnetic
fields. The procedure for radiation pattern measurements
(a) inside the anechoic chamber consisted on placing the car on a
turntable, and when the turntable rotates an array of antennas
(b) measures the electric field generated by the whole system (car,
BCM and wiring harnesses)
Fig. 1(a). The BCM inside the Laguna 3 Fig 1(b). Feko model
The far field radiated by the target was measured on three
planes: XY-PLANE (theta=90°), XZ-PLANE (phi=0°) and
YZ-PLANE (phi=90°). With these measurements, a complete
Figure 2 shows the BCM used by the car without wiring
spatial distribution of the far field radiated can be obtained
harnesses. Fig. 3 shows the wiring harnesses connected to the
[16].
ground plane of the BCM to perform measurements inside the
Four kinds of measurements were done; the first one
anechoic chamber.
consisted on measuring the radiation patterns generated by the
BCM with the wiring harnesses disconnected from the ground
plane. In this case the BCM was put outside the car. The
second measurement consisted on connecting the harnesses to
Fig. 2. The BCM used by the Laguna 3 from Renault the ground plane of the asymmetric dipole and measurements
of the radiation patterns were obtained. As the first
measurement the BCM and the wiring harnesses connected to
it were put outside the car. The objective of the first two
measurements was to observe the form of the radiation
patterns when the BCM is not collocated within the car with
the wires connected and not connected to the ground plane. In
the third measurement the BCM was put inside the sedan car
with the automotive wiring harnesses disconnected to the
BCM and finally in the fourth measurement the wiring
harnesses were connected to the BCM. The aim of these
measurements was to observe how the radiation patterns of the
BCM-antenna system are modified by the connection
conditions of the wiring harnesses.
The automotive wiring harnesses within a car are formed
Fig. 3. Wiring Harnesses connected to the BCM. by multiple wires, but in the simulation only ten wires per
harness were considered.
III. METHOD OF SOLUTION The operation frequency of asymmetric dipole is 434 MHz,
The method of solution used to determine the radiation the material of the antenna and the ground plane is copper, the
patterns generated by the asymmetric dipole, the car and the material of the wires is silicon steel and the dielectric attached
wiring harnesses is the method of moments (MoM). This to the BCM is FR-4.
method was chosen for the next reasons:
1. MoM method does not need discretization of the entire
calculation volume, which is desired for cable applications on V. MEASUREMENT AND SIMULATION RESULTS
oversized systems like cars. In this section, comparisons between measurements and
2. Resolution of the MoM can be accelerated with the use simulations of the radiations patterns generated by the BCM,
of techniques like the fast multipole method (FMM) [15]. the car body and the wiring harnesses located inside the car
The Electromagnetic FEKO software used in this work are presented. The direction of the radiated wave is indicated
resolves the integral equations in the frequency domain to by means of three different polarizations: horizontal, vertical
calculate induced current densities in the car body and the and total.
wiring harnesses due to the electromagnetic field generated by The figure 4 shows the comparisons between the
the antenna. Once current density distribution is calculated measurements and simulations of the radiation patterns when
radiation patterns can be found using standard radiation the wiring harnesses are disconnected to the BCM. In this case
the measurements were carried out with the BCM outside of
the car. It can be observed that the form of the measured the electromagnetic field radiated by the asymmetric dipole
radiation patterns and the value of gains are similar to those antenna.
simulated. The figure 5 shows the same case of the Fig. 4,
with the difference that the wiring harnesses are connected to
the ground plane of the BCM. As the Fig. 4, the correlation Fig. 4. Radiation patterns generated by the asymmetric dipole with wires not
connected to the ground plane and collocated outside the car
between the measurements and simulations is good. We can
observe the wiring harnesses change the form of the radiation
patterns generated by the BCM without wires connected to it.
In this case two kinds of measurements were done: The first
one consisted on putting all the wires together while in the
second one the wires were separated 3 millimeters between
them. We can observe there is no difference if the wires are
together or not. It occurs because the distance between the
wires is small and for consequence the wires are
electromagnetic coupled.
The figure 6 shows the measurements and simulations of
the radiation patterns when the BCM is collocated within the
car and the automotive wiring harnesses are disconnected to
the BCM. It is clear that the value of the gain is smaller in the
measurements than in the simulations; this might be due to the
multiple simplifications done for the simulation. For example,
in the simulations only the chassis, metallic part of the seats,
and the wheel were taken into account and the windshield,
tires and dielectric parts of the car were not included. All these
considerations could affect the simulation results because the
dielectric parts can modify the strength of the radiated electric
field [17]. Such simplifications were done due to the Fig. 5. Radiation patterns generated by the BCM with the wiring harnesses
computing time and memory requirements. connected to the ground plane and collocated outside the car
Figure 7 shows the effect of connecting the wiring
harnesses to the BCM. In this case comparisons between
measurements when the harnesses are disconnected from the
BCM and when they are connected are presented.
The measurements shown in Fig. 7 permit to observe that
the value of the gain is bigger when the wiring harnesses are
connected to the BCM than when the wires are not connected.
This occurs because when the wires are connected to the
ground plane of the asymmetric dipole, all the wires of the
wiring harnesses can be seen as an array of monopole
antennas which increase the gain. As expected the
measurements show that the form of the radiation patterns
when the wiring harnesses are connected to the BCM ground
plane are different to those when the wiring harnesses are
disconnected.
As in the case presented in Fig. 6, differences between
measurements and simulations may be due to the
simplifications made in the numerical calculations.

VI. CONCLUSIONS
From the results from of this work it can be conclude that
wiring harnesses and connection conditions have an important
effect on the behavior of the radiation. As it could be
observed, the form of radiation patterns are modified and
gains are increased when the wiring harnesses are connected
to the PCB. This occurs because harnesses wires behave as
monopole antennas due to the electromagnetic coupling with
 (2) Toulouse France for
where η is the intrinsic supporting this work and the
impedance of the medium, β Renault Company in France
is the phase constant of the for providing the car and
wave, Js is the current density measurement data.
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XI. BIOGRAPHY
Jesús Rodolfo Salas received the B.
Eng. degree in electromechanical
engineering from Instituto
Tecnologico de Zacatepec, Morelos,
Mexico, in 2000, and the M.Sc.
degree from CINVESTAV,
Guadalajara, Mexico, where he is
currently pursuing the PhD. degree.
His research interests are in
electromagnetic transient, in
electromagnetic compatibility and in
antennas.
Guy-Aymar Chakam received the
Ph.D. degree from Universität
Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Currently he is Group Leader
Antenna / simulation Principal
Technical Expert at Continental
Automotive GmbH, Regensburg,
Germany. His research interest is
antenna design and simulation.
Pablo Moreno (M’00) received the
B. Eng. degree in mechanical and
electrical engineering from the
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de
Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City,
Mexico, in 1985, the M.Sc. degree
from the Instituto Tecnologico y de
Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
(ITESM), Monterrey, Mexico, in
1989, and the Ph.D. degree from
Washington State University,
Pullman, in 1997.
Currently, he is a Full Professor
with CINVESTAV, Guadalajara,
Mexico. His research interests
include electromagnetic transients in
electrical and electronic circuits and
electromagnetic compatibility.
Alfredo Gómez Pelayo received the
B. Eng. degree in electronics and
communications engineering from
Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico,
in 1998, and the M.Sc. degree from
Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico,
where he is currently finishing
Currently, he is RF Design
Engineer at Continental Automotive,
Guadalajara, Mexico. His research
interests are in electromagnetic
transient, in electromagnetic
compatibility and in antennas.