Updates from IEC TC 106 Meetings and TCB Council Workshop

All SPEAG’s Solutions in Line with Standard and Regulator Requirements

Major milestones were recently achieved towards the regulatory and standards acceptance of electromagnetic (EM) exposure assessment of emerging wireless devices: New methods, instrumentations and procedures have been presented for wireless power transfer (WPT), Internet of Things (IoT), and power density measurements of 5G and WiGig devices (6 – 100 GHz). The achievements were presented at the IEC TC 106 meetings in Melbourne, Australia (16 – 20 Oct) and the TCB Council Workshop in Baltimore, Maryland, USA (30 Oct – 02 Nov), and are a great benefit to wireless device manufacturers and test labs.

At the IEC TC 106 meetings, several important documents were approved for publication.

• All extensions of the IEC 62209-U (Combined and Extended Document of IEC 62209-1 and 62209-2) were approved including extensions of 4 – 30 MHz and 6 – 10 GHz, and the specific phantoms for IoT devices. Publication is expected in 2019.
• IEC 62209-3 (specific absorption rate (SAR) measurement using vector measurement-based systems) was approved for publication as a Publicly Available Specification (IEC PAS 63151) after a positive vote by the National Committees. Publication is expected before the end of the year. The next step is publication as an International Standard that will be published as standalone document or integrated with IEC62209-U.
• IEC TC106 AHG10 completed its draft technical report for power density measurements of wireless devices operating between 6 – 100 GHz, publication of which is expected in 2018. This will become a de facto standard for compliance assessment of 5G and WiGig devices until the standard is published. To achieve this, IEC TC 106 approved the creation of two new project teams to create international standards for measurements and simulations. It is expected that these standards will be available in 2019.
• IEC TR 62905 has been approved for exposure evaluation from WPT devices. Publication is expected in January 2018. This technical report will also be followed by an international standard. Ad-hoc group 9 agreed to support the Swiss proposal for a new workgroup for a basic measurement standard that applies to all WPT devices. It is anticipated that this standard will be ready by 2019.

The IEC TC 106 has also recently published standards for numerical SAR assessment using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods. The committee also made great progress toward the completion of the first unified SAR measurement standard for wireless devices used at the head and body.

IEC TC106 MT1 celebrating the successful completion of IEC PAS 63151 for SAR assessment using vector measurement-based systems.

The TCB Council Workshop was a four-day event including SAR tutorials on the first day, followed by regulatory updates and information exchange during the following three days. The tutorial included presentations from Prof. Quirino Balzano of the University of Maryland and Prof. Niels Kuster of ETH Zurich and the IT’IS Foundation. These presentations reviewed the history of EM exposure evaluation, the current state and the future of compliance testing. The presentation particularly highlighted the advances made in speed, accuracy and automation.

The regulatory updates of the TCB Council Workshop included presentations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada on a range of topics on equipment authorization. Of particular interest was a presentation Kwok Chan of FCC on WiGig exposure evaluation, Mr. Chan summarized the recent advances in accurate measurement techniques for WiGig exposure evaluation. He also reiterated the preference for using measurements over numerical simulations, given the difficulties in validating the numerical model against the physical device. Numerical simulations may be used to identify the phase combinations leading to the highest exposure. The FCC Knowledge Database (KDB) guidance is well harmonized with the new IEC 5G Technical Report.

Slide on millimeter wave probes presented by the FCC at the TCB Council Workshop in Baltimore (November 2017).

During the last three years, the IT’IS Foundation in collaboration with SPEAG has developed the science and technologies to meet the stringent requirements of the new standards and guidelines. Our 5G solution has been successfully used by a major manufacturer for FCC-type certification of a WiGig device. A unique feature for SEMCAD X allows the fast evaluation of worst-case phase combinations for these devices. The vector measurement-based system, cSAR3D, is the only system to meet the demanding requirements of IEC PAS 63151. Furthermore, measurement and numerical solutions for wireless power transfer (WPT) have been developed, and cDASY6 is continually evolving to meet the growing needs of the standards and regulations, in particular for IOT devices.