Doc. #24
For The
American Radio
Relay League
Board of Directors Meeting
July 19th and 20th, 2002
Mission Statement:
The EMC Committee monitors developments in the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) field and assesses their impact on the Amateur Radio Service. The Committee informs the ARRL Board of Directors about these activities and makes policy recommendations for further action, if appropriate.
The overall goals of the committee are:
Committee Name Change:
To better reflect the terminology in use by the engineering world and other IARU national societies, at its January, 2002 meeting the ARRL Board of Directors changed the name of the former ARRL RFI Task Group to the ARRL EMC Committee. The role and membership of the committee is unchanged.
Members of the Committee:
HQ Staff:
The role of the ARRL HQ staff consists of the following:
Electric Utilities:
Messrs. Hare and Phillips have received reports of interference from electric utilities and other devices. This has turned into the major RFI workload for Mr. Phillips, ARRL's RFI engineer. As of the end of June, 2002, he reports that ARRL has been involved with over 62 new cases of power-line interference. These cases are being worked on by HQ staff, in cooperation with Riley Hollingsworth of the FCC. A number of older cases are still unresolved. The Committee has recommended to staff that they pursue those unresolved cases through the FCC, asking the Commission to send a follow-up letter to utility companies that have not responded appropriately to the FCC's initial inquiry. The committee also recommended that staff meet with Mr. Hollingsworth to discuss those cases where specific FCC enforcement action might be needed. That meeting is scheduled to take place at ARRL Headquarters in July. Messrs. Hare and Phillips both helped considerably in a case involving intermodulation between Cinergy Electric and WLW-AM in Cincinnati, OH.
Part 15:
At the teleconference, the Committee also discussed the growing problems from devices regulated by Part 15 of the FCC rules. The Headquarters staff have identified a number of non-ham transmitters that operate on amateur bands that do not appear to be Certificated as required by FCC rules. These are being marketed to consumers. The Lab also performed a study of conducted emissions from switching power supplies designed to power low-voltage lighting systems. Several of these devices tested by the Lab exceeded the allowable FCC conducted emissions limits by more than 30 dB. The Committee recommended to staff that they document the more serious of these problems and report them formally to the FCC. This should occur sometime in August, 2002. In addition, staff has a few reports that involve interference from legal devices to ongoing Amateur Radio operations. These will be addressed as a staff matter on a case-by-case basis.
Broadband Noise from TV Transmitters:
A major 6-meter noise problem in Milwaukee has been resolved by the involved channel-4 TV station and Harris, the transmitter manufacturer. The Lab is continuing to work with Harris, the TV stations and involved amateurs in similar cases in other cities.
Automotive EMC:
Chrysler, Ford and General Motors now all have their transmitter installation guidelines available on their web sites. ARRL has linked to these guidelines from its pages at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/rficar.html. ARRL continues to send reports of automotive interference involving these manufacturers to their EMC Laboratory staff, to help them better address automotive RFI problems in future years.
HomePlug, Home Phone Networking and VDSL:
The standards and industry specifications for all of these technologies have notches in their output, to protect the HF ham bands. To date, these systems are not widely deployed. The Committee is continuing to watch for reports of interference involving these devices and will aggressively pursue any cases of harmful interference. A related technology is under development -- the IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet-in-the-First-Mile (EFM) standard. This will address fiber optic and copper wire standards for linking customer premises networks to the outside world. The EMC Committee is in regular contact with the industry and will ensure that they have sufficient information about Amateur Radio as this standard is developed. It is expected that protection for Amateur Radio will be part of this standard.
Cable Television:
As a whole, the cable industry is doing a reasonable job at adhering to the FCC's regulations about leakage and interference. ARRL has received few reports of problems, indicating that most systems are either clean or are addressing complaints effectively. The few cases ARRL has been involved with have been addressed through Mr. Hranac, the cable-industry member of this committee. He generally refers the report to the senior technical management of the involved cable company, who then in turn help the local system resolve the reported problem. The advent of digital cable has not created any major new problems, although the increasing use of the HF "talkback" channels may be responsible for one or two reports that appear to involve HF. The Committee is watching these cases closely, to ensure that no industry-wide problems are at hand.
Database:
The ARRL Lab's RFI database was started on January 1, 2002. This is a breakdown of the 228 reports entered into the database:
Committees: ARRL continues to be represented on professional EMC committees. Messrs. Bodson and Hare continue to represent the interests of Amateur Radio on the IEEE/ANSI C63 RFI committee and the Society of Automotive Engineers EMC standards committee. Mr Bodson has been appointed as the C63 representative and HQ staff liaison Mr Hare is the alternate and a member of the C63 committee's ad-hoc working group on power-line communications devices. This continues to be a hot topic of discussion at the C63 meetings.
The C.63 committee is working on developing industry standards for immunity, emissions and testing of electronic devices. ARRL serves as a resource to the committee to protect the interests of Amateur Radio. Subcommittee 1 continues to work on a variety of EMC projects, primarily related to test site standardization. Subcommittee 5 deals with immunity and immunity measurement issues. Subcommittee 8 deals with various types of medical equipment. The ARRL EMC-Committee representation on C63 watches immunity and testing developments.
The Future: Interference to hams appears to be the present major work of the committee. Although immunity problems still do occur, this is being addressed at the national and international standards level and the Committee feels that ARRL's information about RFI needs no Committee fine tuning. RFI from unlicensed devices poses a major real threat to Amateur Radio at this time. This will continue to require significant Committee and ARRL staff attention. To the extent possible with existing staff, or with additional resources, the ARRL should increase its contact with standards organization, industry groups and individual companies, and continue to work on all aspects of RFI problems and solutions.
ARRL's information about RFI can be read at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/rfigen.html.