What is EMC?

EMC is Electromagnetic Compatibility. Most people who are dealing with electrical products are familiar with EMC.

EMC (Electromagnetic Compatibility ) Testing is a requirement for most of the electrical products which emits or is subjected to electromagnetic disturbance. All electric devices or systems influence each other when interconnected or close to each other.

Why EMC testing is required?

The purpose of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is to keep all those side effects under reasonable control. The electromagnetic compatibility ensures that electrical and electronic equipment does not generate, or is not affected by, electromagnetic disturbance.

Which regulations or directives are applied for EMC testing?

Each country or region applies their own regulations. Europe regulates EMC requirements through CE marking directives like EMC Directive (2014/30/EU) or RED (2014/53/EU).

In USA, FCC regulates EMC related products with its FCC standards.

Japan applies VCCI marking.

South Korea applies KC marking.

Most of the countries are regulating EMC-related products with their own law, directives or standards.

How to perform EMC testing?

Since EMC tests are performed according to standards, test instruments and test setups are also defined by the standards. If you want to perform full-compliance EMC testing, you have to follow all items mentioned on the standard and use the required instrumentation. For some tests, like radiated emission or immunity, you may require special test rooms called anechoic chambers. If you want to perform pre-compliance EMC test, you can skip some of the parameters mentioned on the standards, and perform pre-compliance testing before full-compliance. Product designers, engineers or R&D teams may use this way of testing. Pre-compliance testing reduces the cost of having an EMC lab but you also ignore some parameters or tests intentionally.