Published: September 2020
An informative annex has been added to the European MME emission requirements standard. This blog post explains the background to the amendment and the impact on users’ ability to demonstrate compliance with the current applicable EU Directive.
BS EN 55032: 2015+A11:2020 Electromagnetic compatibility of multimedia equipment — Emission Requirements is the latest incarnation of a popular European standard that covers emission requirements of multimedia equipment (MME). It was developed in recognition of the fact that IT, communication and audio-video equipment now often integrate many different functions, features and capabilities that in the past were covered by different compliance standards.
BS EN 55032 establishes requirements that provide an adequate level of protection of the radio spectrum, allowing radio services to operate as intended in the frequency range 9 kHz to 400 GHz. It specifies procedures to ensure the reproducibility of measurement and the repeatability of results.
It’s a popular standard because it replaces using separate compliance standards for different features. This makes the testing of multimedia appliances simpler, more convenient, and more time efficient. It solves the question that was previously asked regarding which was the correct standard to use.
However, the 2015 version of the standard became somewhat less useful on April 20 2016. On this date, the EU’s EMC Directive 2004/108/EC was repealed, and replaced by EMC Directive 2014/30/EU.
As a consequence, the standard’s Annex ZZ – which referred only to the essential requirements of the previous EMC Directive – became redundant. The result was that users of the standard thereafter needed to use another means of conformity to demonstrate compliance with the new Directive. The standard needed a new Annex – and that is what now forms the amendment to the 2020 standard.
Informative annex
In fact the journey to producing this amendment has not been smooth sailing. What was needed was an informative annex showing the relationship between BS EN 55032:2015 and the essential requirements of Directive 2014/30/EU.
To produce this long-awaited amendment required extensive discussions between the European Committee, in which the UK is represented, CENELEC (the European Standards Body) and the European Commission. The procedure used in its development differed from that used for usual amendments in that it was not voted on by national committees. It was however, approved by the CENELEC Technical Board on which the UK is represented. UK Stakeholders were notified that this Annex was to be published by way of a Special Announcement in February 2020.
What we have as a result is Annex ZZ.1. This demonstrates that the standard covers the protection requirements in Annex I, Article 1(a) of EU Directive 2014/30/EU. As soon as it was cited in the Official Journal of the European Union, compliance with this standard provided presumption of conformity with the specified essential requirements of the Directive.
This has restored a really useful facet of BS EN 55032, which is set to become very popular once more.
