Those are the findings of a recent study by researchers at the IoT Inspector platform and German IT magazine CHIP, who found a total of 226 potential WiFi security vulnerabilities in routers manufactured by nine companies, including Asus, D-Link, Netgear, and Linksys. Individual routers with the largest number of identified individual vulnerabilities were the TP‑Link Archer AX6000 with 32 vulnerabilities and the Synology RT-2600ac router with 30 vulnerabilities…

n the past decades, the Internet has been booming and connecting people around the world. Current technology trends tell us that not only the people but also machine-type devices, e.g., household appliances, street facilities such as traffic lights, and connected vehicles, are going to be connected and communicate with each other. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a buzzword crossing all vertical industries. We are now, so to speak, in the dawn of the IoT era. With IoT technology, the world is getting increasingly smart. New concepts such as smart cities, smart homes, and smart agriculture are becoming a part of daily life and gradually changing our lifestyles.

Cellular IoT (CIoT) is considered one of the most attractive contributions to the IoT industry. The technologies referred to as licensed spectrum-based low-power wide-area (LPWA) access technologies are deployed in the GSM, LTE, or 5G new radio (NR) network and provide benefits with respect to quality of service, reliability, latency, and coverage range. Yet they also have the characteristics of low complexity, low cost, and low power consumption. CIoT technology provides the opportunity for enterprises to increase efficiency and improve value for the customer.

Editor’s Note: The paper on which this article is based was originally presented at the 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Product Safety Engineering held virtually in November 2020. It is reprinted here with the gracious permission of the IEEE. Copyright 2021 IEEE.

Nuisance tripping of GFCIs (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters) has given rise to questions about the role of conducted emissions from equipment using switching methods, such as VSDs (Variable Speed Drives), in causing a GFCI to trip. An earlier paper [1] described a test condition where several GFCIs would trip inadvertently under an applied Electrical Fast Transient (EFT) impulse; this false-positive result is normally considered nuisance tripping since the tripping cause was not determined. This follow-on paper provides additional data from testing aimed at looking at the line conducted emissions and ground lead touch current from some units while under actual operation using GFCIs.

Note that most GFCIs use the difference in line and return current to trigger protection; however, a common electric shock is from current in the earth/ground lead when this lead is not properly grounded. The differential line current is then a proxy for the earth/ground current hazard.

lectric vehicles are clearly a rapidly growing part of the automotive scene. They promise low or no emissions, conceivably low cost of energy from the power grid, yet they will continue to deliver us safely from here to there. However, electric vehicle design and manufacturing is clearly a paradigm shift for the automotive industry – new drive systems, technologies, and test plans.

Electric vehicles are bringing new test and validation challenges as the electronic and software content of the vehicles grow. In this article, we will discuss the basics of electric vehicle battery pack designs and some of the tests that should be performed on them in a manufacturing environment. We’ll also discuss a conceptual solution to this complex testing challenge.

In Part 8, we evaluated the performance of the baseline AC/DC converter. The baseline AC/DC converter had only the components needed for functionality and did not have any specific EMC components populated. The results showed multiple failures in both radiated and conducted emissions.

Here, we present a systematic approach to improve these failures by populating the PCB with optional EMC countermeasures on component pads that have already been designed into the PCB layout and show their impact on the radiated and conducted emissions. The EMC countermeasures are illustrated in Figure 1 as purple dashed boxes labeled EMC-A through EMC-F.