Lightning stroke, particularly the return stroke part of the
lightning, forms a high return stroke current. The current peak
magnitudes are of the orders of several tens of kilo amperes. A
value of 200kA have been reported [6]. This current is in the
form of a pulse. Due to its rapidly time-varying characteristics
(large time rate of change of current), it sets up time varying
electromagnetic (EM) fields. These time varying EM fields
induce voltage and current surges in electric/electronics
circuits. Solid-state electronic components and circuits are
particularly vulnerable to these lightning induced voltages and
current surges. The first step towards protecting these devices
would be to characterize the impact of the lightning induced
electromagnetic fields. This process of characterization
involves the lightning currents and the associated electric and
magnetic field pulses over the duration of the lightning flash.