EMC/EMI/ESD Standards for Commercial Electronic Products

This web site is being maintained by John R. Barnes, who was the President and Chief Engineer of dBi Corporation from 2002 to September 30, 2013, when we closed because ObamaCrap made it too expensive for us to remain in business.

John R. Barnes KS4GL, PE, NCE, NCT, ESDC Eng, ESDC Tech, PSE, Master EMC Design Engineer, SM IEEE
December 4, 2011
jrbarnes@iglou.com

Many nations and market areas require commercial electronic products to meet electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards before they may be marketed and sold there. The European Union (EU) also requires commercial electronic products to meet: Determining just which standards apply to a product-- and will apply for the foreseeable future-- can be difficult, because these standards are constantly changing. At irregular intervals, nations and market areas:

These web pages have brief summaries of 330+ standards/ amendments in 120 families of EMC/EMI/ESD standards for the types of commercial electronic products that dBi tests for clients. To help you find pertinent standards, they are indexed four ways:



These web pages summarize current worldwide EMC/EMI/ESD requirements by product type:



This section has links to brief summaries of EMC/EMI/ESD standards for:

Some families of United States (US) EMC/EMI/ESD standards are:

Some families of Canadian EMC/EMI/ESD standards are:

Some families of European Union (EU) EMC/EMI/ESD standards are:

Even if you think you know which EU standards (European Norms (EN's)) apply to a product, I suggest skimming through the titles of all the Harmonized Standards under the EMC Directive, Directive 2004/108/EC, as a doublecheck:

  1. Go to the EUR-Lex search page.
  2. Type "2004/108/EC" in the Search for box, and hit Enter.
  3. Click on "pdf" under recent entries titled "Commission communication in the framework of the implementation of ...". (For example, in late November 2011 the most recent listing was OJ C 288, dated 30.9.2011 (September 30, 2011).
  4. Look through the entire list, because Emission and Immunity standards for a product family aren't always close to one another.
  5. The Harmonics (EN 61000-3-2) and Flicker (EN 61000-3-3) standards apply to all alternating-current- (AC-) powered products.

To find more information about recent EN standards, such as the most recent version(s) and amendment(s) if you have an undated reference:

  1. Go to the CENELEC Advanced search page.
  2. In the Key words box, type in a standard number (such as "61000-6-4", "61000-6-4:2007", "EN 61000-6-4", or "EN 61000-6-4:2007"), or an amendment number (such as "EN 61000-6-4:2007/A1" or "EN 61000-6-4:2007/A1:2011"), and hit Enter.
  3. Click on the link for the standard/ amendment (an "Fp" means that work on this document is still in process, and it has not yet been approved).
  4. If the Reference Document line (about 1/2 way down the page) says "(MOD)", the EN standard/ amendment differs from the reference standard somehow; if it says "(EQV)", the documents are identical.
  5. Dav (date of availability, in the form yyyy-mm-dd) is the date that the EN standard/ amendment is released to the National Standards Bodies in all of the EU's official languages. These Bodies then have until the Dop (date of publication) to publish the standard/ amendment.
  6. Dow (date of withdrawal, in the form yyyy-mm-dd) is the latest date at which any conflicting (earlier) national standards must be withdrawn. This is usually the same as the Date of cessation of presumption of conformity of the superceded standard (DOCOPOCOSS) in lists of Harmonized Standards in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ). But if they disagree, use the DOCOPOCOSS.

Some families of Australian and New Zealand EMC/EMI/ESD standards are:

To find an Australia/ New Zealand standard corresponding to an EN, CISPR, or IEC standard:

  1. Go to SAI Global.
  2. In the Search box, type a standard number ("EN xxxxx", "CISPR xx", "IEC xxxxx", etc.) and hit Enter.
  3. Look for an AS/NZS standard with a similar number.
  4. If the description says MOD, the AS/NZS standard differs from the reference standard in some way.
  5. Click on the description to read about the AS/NZS standard.
  6. If it has Preview under the description, click on this to read the first few pages of the standard.

Australia and New Zealand accept AS/NZS and some AS, CISPR, EN, IEC, and ISO standards for Emissions of unintentional radiators. For Australia, see the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) EMC standards list . A standard may be used from the Publication Date on this list, up to the Expiry Date of replaced standard for the standard which replaces it. The Radiocommunications Labelling (Electromagnetic Compatibility) Notice 2008 paragraph 6.3 says that AS/NZS, CISPR, and IEC standards may be used for up to 2 years after a replacement comes out, while paragraph 6.4 says that EN standards may be used for the same period that they are accepted by the European Union. For New Zealand, see the Radio Spectrum Management (RSM) Radiocommunications (EMC Standards) Notice 2004 No. 2 for a list of acceptable Emission standards.

Some families of Japanese EMC/EMI/ESD standards are:

Some families of Chinese EMC/EMI/ESD standards are:

Some families of Taiwanese EMC/EMI/ESD standards are:

The majority of worldwide EMC/EMI/ESD standards are based on, or exact copies of:

CISPR and IEC standards are recommendations, and don't become legal requirements until they are adopted by a nation or market area-- unchanged or with modifications. The adopting nation/ market area also decides when its version of the CISPR/ IEC standard takes effect, and how long it will remain in effect.

Some families of CISPR and IEC standards are:

To find additional information about recent CISPR and IEC standards:

  1. Write down the reference standard/ amendment (in parentheses under the title of the EN standard). If this says "(modified)", the EN version differs from the reference standard/ amendment in some way.
  2. Go to the IEC Advanced search page.
  3. In the Publications box, choose the appropriate header (CISPR, IEC, etc.).
  4. Type the standard number in the Reference box, and hit Enter.
  5. Click on the link for the standard/ amendment you want.
  6. If you are lucky, you will see a preview box after the title of the standard-- click on it.
  7. Scroll down through the preview, looking for a section titled "scope".
  8. Read through the scope, to see if it applies to your product.

If you need to buy a standard, I recommend checking the EUR-Lex search page, the CENELEC Advanced search page, SAI Global, and the IEC Advanced search page as described above, to find all of the identical/ equivalent versions (EN, CISPR, IEC, AS/NZS) of the standard/ amendment that you need. Then check the availability and prices from several companies that sell standards. I frequently find at least a 2:1 spread in their prices for the same document-- and since I buy an average of 15 standards/ amendments each year to keep up with our clients' testing requirements-- a few minutes doing research on the Internet saves us quite a bit of money.

For amendments to IEC and CISPR standards, you may have a choice of buying the base standard and its amendments separately, or buying a consolidated edition. A consolidated edition x.y will have base standard edition x merged with its amendments 1 through y. In a number of my recent purchases of I.S. EN standards (published by the National Standards Authority of Ireland) as .pdf files from SAI Global, I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that they included the first amendment at no extra cost.

I prefer to buy standards/ amendments as .pdf files, because I can usually download them within minutes of placing my order, versus waiting days to sometimes months to get hardcopies. I'll print out a hardcopy for our Standards Library, as our primary reference, and keep the .pdf file on my computer where I can search it using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader.



These web pages group the EMC/EMI/ESD standards by the types of phenomena they cover:



All together, this web site summarizes the following families of EMC/EMI/ESD standards:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank John Fessler, Helge Knudsen, Dan Kinney, Scott Douglas, Michael Loerzer, and Richard Woods for their help on this project.

DISCLAIMER
These web pages are freely offered to anyone who wishes to use them. No warranty for their use is expressed or implied. The most-current versions may be downloaded from the our web site at http://www.dbicorporation.com/.

These web pages can point you to regulations and standards applying to your product(s), but please refer to the regulations and standards themselves when deciding how to test your product(s). A regulation's or standard's title gives you strong clues as to what it covers, but its scope (usually section 1) tells you for sure. Carefully check the footnotes in tables, to see if your product falls into an exception that lets you avoid unnecessary tests (or sometimes requires additional special testing). Exceptions that can help you also sometimes hide in the Test Setup section (usually section 7). Also check the Test Report section (usually section 10) for any special documentation required.

COMMENTS
If you refer to one or more of these documents in written communications, please attribute them to http://www.dbicorporation.com/. Similarly, if you link to them from your own web page(s), we would appreciate an E-mail to jrbarnes@iglou.com giving the universal resource link (URL) so that we may provide a reciprocal link.

Please send critiques, corrections, and/or additions to jrbarnes@iglou.com , or by snailmail to:
John Barnes
216 Hillsboro Ave
Lexington, KY 40511-2105


dBi Corporation was a one-man test house (testing laboratory) based in Lexington, Kentucky, testing a wide variety of commercial electronic products for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), electromagnetic interference (EMI), and electrostatic discharge (ESD) under its ISO 17025 accreditation. dBi was founded in Winchester, Kentucky in 1995 by Donald R. Bush, shortly after he retired from 30 years service with IBM Lexington's/ Lexmark's EMC Lab. John R. Barnes, who'd worked with Don at IBM Lexington and Lexmark, bought dBi in 2002 after Don's death, and moved the company to Lexington, Kentucky. John closed dBi at 11:59pm EDT on September 30, 2013, because ObamaCrap had increased operating expenses to the point that we could no longer afford to remain in business.

We'd like to thank all of the clients who chose dBi to test their products from 1995 to 2013. Below is a brief summary of our accomplishments during the 18 years we were in business.

From 1995 to 2001, under Don Bush's ownership and operation, dBi:

From 2002 to 2013, under John Barnes' ownership and operation, dBi:

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Last revised December 4, 2011.