Past Columns

Recently, a colleague remarked to me, “Philosophically, of course, there is no such thing as absolute safety.” Could this be true? Is there a situation where a man could not possibly injure himself?

The effectiveness of different materials for shielding can be tested using near field probes and your vector network analyzer (VNA).

China’s homegrown “WeChat” application has nearly 900 million users. Need a car? Pay a check? Send someone some cash? Rate a dining venue? Make a video call? Send an endless series of silly emojis? WeChat is the platform, at least in China. It’s IM, Facebook, Tripadvisor and Skype all in one. And a gateway to to the Internet of Things.

This issue’s topic is rather unique because this column addresses safety requirements for a non-safety critical device, “operational” or “functional” insulation.

As of June 13, 2017 all radio transmitters that are placed on the market in the European Union will have to comply with the new Radio Equipment Directive (RED) 2014/53/EU. This reality affects millions of devices destined for the EU.

What is a “level of protection”? What are “measures of safety”? Why do they apply only to electric shock and not to other injuries?

This article reviews some of the current thinking with regard to IoT. The range and scope of IoT is truly enormous so we’ll take a stab at the opportunities in for us EMC and wireless folks.

If your EMI filter is failing in high frequencies, check the frequency response of the components: parasitics limit the filtering effectiveness.

Why? Why is it that one of the biggest aggravations in product safety is that of markings? For some reason, it seems that we can never get the markings right the first time. Furthermore, it seems that markings that have been acceptable for years will suddenly go bad.

For many applications, especially in digital designs, you can see decoupling networks composed of several different (big and small) capacitors in parallel. But, sometimes this technique can be dangerous.