Compensating for the skin effect in a shunt

1. A method for use with a current shunt, the shunt having a complex impedance, wherein the complex impedance produces frequency-dependent effects upon a voltage waveform across the shunt when passing an electric current through the shunt, the method comprising:

modeling the complex impedance of the shunt as a summation of at least two component complex impedances associated with parallel paths through the shunt, thereby creating a shunt model;

designing a physical electronic filter corresponding to the shunt model to reverse the frequency-dependent effects of the complex impedance of the shunt on the voltage waveform;

physically connecting the filter to the shunt by an electrical connection, thereby applying the filter to the frequency-dependent voltage waveform, wherein the frequency-dependent voltage waveform is transformed into a linear function of the passing current; and

reading the transformed value of the passing current,

wherein the step of modeling the complex impedance of the shunt further comprises:

modeling the parallel paths through the shunt as a parallel connection of at least two branches, each branch comprising a series connection of an inductor having a value of inductance and a resistor having a value of resistance; and

assigning a numerical value to the value of inductance and a numerical value to the value of resistance for each branch of the shunt model.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the physical electronic filter corresponding to the shunt model is an analog filter, and the step of designing a physical electronic filter further comprises

connecting a plurality of parallel-connected pairs of components in series, each parallel-connected pair of components comprising a compensating capacitor having a value of compensating capacitance and a compensating resistor having a value of compensating resistance.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the step of designing a physical electronic filter further comprises calculating a value of compensating resistance in order to provide a specific value of conductance and a value of a compensating capacitance.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the physical electronic filter corresponding to the shunt model further comprises a voltage-to-current converter.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the physical electronic filter corresponding to the shunt model is a digital filter, and the step of designing a physical electronic filter further comprises:

defining a system transfer function of the digital filter as a summation of at least two component transfer functions, each associated with a component value of complex impedance;

defining the at least two component transfer functions as functions of a complex variable in the analog domain; and

converting the at least two transfer functions defined as functions of a complex variable in the analog domain into functions of a complex variable in the digital domain.

6. The method of claim 5 , further comprising sampling the voltage waveform across the shunt over at least two sampling periods at a defined sampling rate, thereby producing sampled signal data.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the step of applying the filter to the frequency-dependent voltage waveform further comprises:

providing the sampled signal data as values for use with the functions of a complex variable in the digital domain; and

solving the functions of a complex variable in the digital domain for the at least two component transfer functions for the defined sampling rate.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising an antialiasing filter connected between the shunt and the filter, wherein the antialiasing filter rejects frequency components at very high frequencies.

9. The method of claim 5 , wherein the digital filter is executed in a software program, and the step of designing a physical electronic filter further comprises implementing the software program in an embedded controller.