In November 2022 the REDCA meeting (Radio Equipment Directive Compliance Association) took place. GLOBALNORM is a member of REDCA and participates as always in these meetings to stay up to date.
Among others, a representative of the EU Commission always reports in the meeting. The topic "Harmonized Standards" is always a highlight of the report. There was the pre-announcement on the new (complete!) list of harmonized standards for the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU (RED), which was published in the Official Journal of the European Union only days later on 10.11.2022. This list entered into force just one day after its publication and replaced all previous publications on harmonized standards.
Another point of the report made people sit up and take notice: As of this publication, the EU Commission is paying closer attention to tolerances in the standards. This is not about the measurement uncertainties, as the representative of the EU Commission confirmed. It is about various types of tolerances. For example, in some radio standards the maximum transmission power is allowed with a tolerance of +2.7 dB. However, due to a decision made 10 years ago (see link below), the EU Commission does not want to accept tolerances for transmission power of more than +2.0 dB.
The same applies to some tolerances that the EU Commission wants to have found in the radio EMC basic standard EN 301 489-1 (V2.2.3) (11-2019). This leads to the listing of the first ever Radio EMC product standards to the Radio Equipment Directive, namely:
- EN 301 489-12 V3.2.1 Earth stations (inmobil) 4-40 GHz
- EN 301 489-20 V2.2.1 Earth stations (mobile) and
- EN 301 489-52 V1.2.1 EMC for mobile radio equipment (GSM, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, ...)
is only carried out with restrictions and therefore no presumption of conformity is given. No "Notified Body" is required for EMC. But in this respect, the listing is hardly an improvement compared to the time before the listing.
In this context, it should be recalled that the EU Commission also does not accept the 80/20 rule of series monitoring, which is included in many EMC product standards. The Commission expects 100% of all series products to comply with 100% of the normative limits in emitted interference. So far, the issue has not resulted in a listing with restrictions on these standards.
It remains exciting...
This article can only touch on the points. For further details, our EMC and radio experts are at your disposal – write to us!
