Daniel Hoolihan

With the inventions of the transistor in 1948 and the Integrated Circuit in 1958, and the utilization of these major breakthroughs in the development of computers and other electronic devices, industry began to worry about and to design components and end-products that could survive the discharge of electrostatic discharges to chips, printed circuit boards, and final packaged-products.

Designers and manufacturers of electronic products are frequently faced with the question: “How do I find a high-quality EMC testing laboratory where I can confidently test my products?” The emphasis of the great majority of design and/or manufacturing entities is on obtaining (1) quality preliminary testing of EMC characteristics to refine the design of their products and (2) quality final design testing of their product for regulatory approvals. The final design, of course, is what gets manufactured and released to the general population for their use in daily life. This article is intended to aid designers and manufacturers in finding and utilizing high-quality EMC testing laboratories.

The first part of this paper reviewed the first one-third of the report including the Title of the Paper, the Background to its development, the Members of the Subcommittee that developed the report, Definitions, Table of Contents, Scope and Section 4. This second part of the paper will look at Section 5 (Susceptibility of Communications Receivers to Commercial EDP/OE Emanations) of the Report.

In the middle of the 1970s, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began to look seriously at electromagnetic emissions from electronic data processing (EDP) equipment and office equipment (OE). This growing awareness on the part of the United States telecommunications regulation body was a result of the increasing number of computers being used by society and the increased potential for growth by licensed broadcast services due to the proliferation of electronic-computer sources. The Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association (CBEMA) formed a technical subcommittee to assist in preparing an industry response to the concerns of the FCC. This paper reviews the report developed by that technical subcommittee, made public in May of 1977.

CISPR 11 is the International Standard for electromagnetic emissions (disturbances) from Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) Equipment. The official title of the standard is “Industrial, Scientific, and Medical Equipment – Radio-Frequency Disturbance Characteristics – Limits and Methods of Measurement.” The premiere edition of the standard was released in 1975 and the latest edition (Edition 5.0) was released in 2009. The standard includes both limits and methods of measurement for conducted phenomena and radiated phenomena. This article traces the history and development of the content of the standard over the last 35 years.