IEC 61000-4-3: Radiated, radio-frequency, electromagnetic field immunity test
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IEC 61000-4-3 is a commercial EMC standard that outlines test procedures manufacturers must meet before products are sold. The object of IEC 61000-4-3 is to establish a common reference for a product or device's immunity to electromagnetic radiation. Products must be designed and tested to ensure that they are immune to both intentional transmitters, such as walkie talkies and cell phones, and unintentional RF emitting devices like electric motors and welders. There are 4 basic test levels a product must withstand to pass this test:
Test Level
Field Strength
1
1 V/m
2
3 V/m
3
10 V/m
4
30 V/m
IEC 61000-4-3 does not suggest that a single test level is applicable over the entire frequency range, and should be tested for the appropriate test level for each frequency range. Testing for general purpose RF emissions covers the 80MHz to 1000MHz frequency range and should be performed without any gaps. For digital radiotelephones and other higher frequency devices, tests should be performed in the 800MHz to 960MHz and 1.4GHz to 6.0GHz frequency ranges. Tests in these ranges do not need to be applied continuously over the entire range, and the ranges may be limited to specific frequencies for compliance with specific operating bands in the country the product will be sold in.
There are four major changes that were made to this standard in the third version to better measure immunity at higher frequency ranges which are now more commonly present:
First and most importantly, the new harmonic distortion requirement of the test setup must be better than -6dBc. This is to minimize distortion at higher frequency ranges.
Second, a linearity check must be performed before testing to ensure that the RF amplifier used is not operating in compression.
Third, the frequency range was extended up to 6GHz as a result of the increased use of these