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I see two challenges for EMC in the near future: the proliferation of power electronics related to renewable energy, and the expansion of regulatory testing up to 6 GHz. All the inverters and DC/DC converters needed to tie solar and wind power into the grid will continue to be a challenge to control to protect the lower frequency range of electromagnetic spectrum.

On the higher end, testing more products up to 6 GHz (those which may previously have only been tested to 1 GHz) will uncover new problems that need to be addressed.

Getting teams trained to be aware and proactive about EMC concerns will be more important than ever.

In mid-2025, the FCC adopted a number of rulings regarding the use of bad labs for the certification of products marketed or sold in the United States. Report and Order FCC 25-27, adopted on May 22, 2025, establishes requirements for Telecommunication Certification Bodies (TCBs), test labs, and test lab accrediting bodies, and changed the focus from technical competence to trustworthiness. The focus is on those entities that are located in China, and/or are more than 10% owned by Chinese entities. 

We suspect that this will cause a major shift in testing to other countries, perhaps Southeast Asia or the Americas. Device manufacturers and test labs should prepare for challenges in finding available test labs, and for a large increase in testing opportunities.

As we look toward the next generation of power electronics, the adoption of both GaN and SiC devices is accelerating, creating a challenge between electronics design, thermal management, and electromagnetic compatibility. We are seeing these high-power designs force a critical trade-off between thermal performance and EMC control, with significant common-mode noise emerging across a wide frequency spectrum, often beginning at the lower bounds of emission standards.

I anticipate that the push for smaller form factors will drive the adoption of integrated active filters to minimize component size, while electrostatic shielding between the heatsink and components may become essential for containing high-frequency noise by providing a controlled path for circulating currents.

Success will depend on a co-design methodology where thermal and EMC considerations are addressed concurrently from the earliest stages, moving beyond sequential fixes to a truly integrated system approach.

Can Test and Certification Ever Keep Up With Innovation?

As the IoT world evolves, product developers and innovators are creating an ever-increasing number of use cases for existing products or designing new products to achieve the objective of providing a solution to a real-world problem and using internet-connected technology to do it. Around our homes, we have the ability to control many, if not most, of our household appliances and will use existing standards and regulations to demonstrate compliance with whatever legislative requirements exist, but do these standards and regulations continue to be fit for purpose? How can they ever keep up to date with the latest technology and innovation? This paper explores the topic and highlights how Element continues to play its part in addressing this challenge.

Most countries and regions throughout the world have their own product regulations, helping to keep their citizens safe and reduce dangerous products entering their market. These regulations will typically use test standards as a means of providing evidence and consistency across industries to demonstrate adherence to the regulations, either as National standards or the parent International one.

While regulations are mandatory, manufacturers need to ensure that their products will work in the ecosystem that they are designed to operate – lets face it, if you want a new pair of headphones, you’re probably going to look for a Bluetooth logo, or if its directly connected to the internet, a Wi-Fi router, as opposed to any other type of broadband wireless access system. These industry standards are written by a cross section of stakeholders and bring the expertise of IoT innovators, test and certification companies, and protocol experts together to create interoperability standards, thus ensuring the connectivity in the ecosystem.

Accepting that there are two types of test standards and certification, underpinning regulations and IoT innovation, comes an appreciation that regulatory standards have to be written with technology neutrality in mind for regulations, to make to open for all. On the other hand, IoT standards have to be written by a cross-functional group of stakeholders to ensure that, as technology and use cases are designed, there are a series of tests and assessments that are developed in parallel to ensure that the products work and are fit-for-purpose.

It’s worth reflecting on an old industry saying, “the beauty of standards is that there are so many to choose from,” which seems quite relevant to highlight how difficult it is for companies such as Element to keep up with the latest developments. There are so many different ‘alliances’ formed to solve a particular industry challenge, which one should it support and participate in? The reality is that no one knows until manufacturers start developing products and consumers start buying them – ultimately, just like Betamax and VHS video tapes of old, there will only be one survivor.

Element focuses on key end markets where it wants to operate and where failure is not an option due to the inherent risks. The ever-increasing complexity of IoT products needs companies like Element to participate in a mixture of regulatory and IoT industry standard bodies, as they have particular experience to offer based on their practical experience of testing.

Element rises to these challenges and leads in a number of key areas of product regulations and standards, from chairing the IEC Conformity Assessment schemes, to participation and leadership roles in ANSI and International standards, to participating in expert working groups of IoT innovation and protocol standards.

The benefit for Element and its customers is not only having a detailed understanding of the requirements, but also the background as to how these have been formulated and why. Element customers then benefit from reduced testing regimes where data to support one certification activity can be used to provide evidence for another, helping to reduce cost and, more importantly, time to market.

Identifying Coupling in Real World Systems

A Beginning Guide to How Noise Moves in a System and How to Stem It

By Christopher Semanson

nintended electromagnetic coupling shows up in more ways than we care to admit. Picture this: your latest PCB assembly comes back from fabrication, you power it up, clip on the scope, load the bring up code, and the screen fills with ragged edges and random spikes. The demo you expected to run clean now looks like a jittery mess, and the system that behaved in simulation suddenly appears unpredictable.

You ask around and hear the classic replies: “That is just noise,” or “That’s just crosstalk.” We have all been there. Those symptoms are almost always attributed to unintentional coupling between circuits, which is energy moving along paths we did not intend to create. The usual suspects are layout choices, component selections, cable and harness effects, or enclosure details that felt minor at the time but that have big consequences during bring up. These decisions generally range from…

Coexistence Testing for Wireless Medical Devices

Ensuring Reliable Performance in a Crowded Spectrum

By William Koerner

y first exposure to wireless networking was when it became possible for me to send files to my printer over the 2.4 GHz band. That was almost 30 years ago. Data rates were not really fast, but fast enough to print documents or send e-mails. Since then, the number of devices using the unlicensed wireless spectrum and the available frequency band has grown significantly. Other than just being an interesting technology trend, many device manufacturers have found that using a wireless interface is more efficient and convenient than using traditional wired interfaces.

This is especially true for medical devices, especially in crowded emergency and operating rooms. (As a side note, I just had a doctor’s visit this morning and noticed the number of devices that still had wired interfaces to their sensors.) Multiple equipment with multiple wired interfaces can get in the way of lifesaving measures and can even present trip hazards.

Shielding to Prevent Radiation

Part 6: Near-Field Shielding Effectiveness of a Solid Conducting Shield

By Bogdan Adamczyk

his is the sixth of seven articles devoted to the topic of shielding to prevent electromagnetic wave radiation. The first article [1] discussed the reflection and transmission of uniform plane waves at a normal boundary. The second article [2] addressed the normal incidence of a uniform plane wave on a solid conducting shield with no apertures. The third article [3] presented the exact solution for the shielding effectiveness of a solid conducting shield. The fourth article [4] presented the approximate solution obtained from the exact solution. The fifth article [5] discussed the wave impedance of electric and magnetic dipoles. In this article, we will use the concept of wave impedance to determine the shielding effectiveness in the near field.

Near-Field Shielding – Electric Sources

Note: The following derivations are valid under the assumption that the shield made of a good conductor is much thicker than the skin depth, at the frequency of interest.

The shielding effectiveness in the near field for electric sources is…

Can mechanical movements on FI‑CDM tester cause additional zap during CDM stress?

for EOS/ESD Association, Inc.

his investigation is the first to examine how mechanical movements impact CDM stress, revealing that such movements add stress to the Device Under Test—a finding relevant for Field‑Induced CDM testers and any tester requiring part movement to trigger a zap. The study provided clear evidence of unwanted zaps caused by contact bouncing and proposed mitigation solutions. Based on these findings, the tester supplier modified the tester’s software, representing evolutionary but significant progress in improving test accuracy and reliability.

During FI-CDM testing, discharge current polarity can sometimes oppose the stress condition. In Figure 1, a negative zap occurs despite a +500V stress condition. We refer to this unintended zap as a secondary discharge.

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