Standards and Regulations for Electronic Products

STANDARDS & REGULATIONS

Learning to Love Your Standards

Many view standards as an annoying overhead that must be complied with. However, standards are a boon to all because they have identified, and dealt with, a wide range of risks. If you comply with a standard, regulatory authorities are satisfied these risks have been dealt with.

In developing electronic devices, companies have to deal with a wide range of regulations. Often a company has to set up internal systems to show they are being dealt with adequately. View our page on Regulatory Compliance Support for further information.

Following are just some of the standards we have expertise in:

Compliance Services

General Safety

AS3100 - Approval and test specification - General requirements for electrical equipment:
This is the primary specification governing the approval and test specification of electrical equipment. As such any electronic product must adhere to these basic rules governing safety.

IEC 60335-1 - Safety for household and similar electrical appliances:
This is for both battery operated appliances and mains connected.

AS/NZS 61558 - Safety of transformers, reactors, power supply units:
This covers a specific aspect around power supply used in most product designs
IEC 61508 Functional Safety (Safety Integration Level - SIL):Products need to be designed to reduce the potential for dangerous malfunction resulting from people, environment and/or process. This standard covers the principles for safety life cycle and probabilistic failure for electrical and electronics systems.

AS 3000 - Wiring Rules: Many electronic products are hard wired into a building environment. As such, the design and installation must adhere to general rules for electrical installations.

Intrinsic Safety Some projects also operate in hazardous areas where they may be exposed to explosive gases or dusts, etc. Such equipment needs to be intrinsically safe. There are a wide range of standards from IEC, UL and more covering different contexts.

General Safety Standards

Product requirements

In addition to the General Safety standards outlined above, consumer, commercial and industrial products must also apply to a number of other standards, including:

IEC 60730-1 Automatic electrical controls - Part 1: General requirements
Most devices we design include elements of a control system. This standard applies to the use of control systems in equipment, buildings and industrial processes. In particular it is the standard covering the use of relays, a common feature of industrial systems.

WEEE - Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment Directive
This is a regulation covering all of Europe and by extension to most products with a global market. The directive sets out rules on the collection, recycling, and recovery of materials from all types of electrical goods. This standard is closely related to another directive called the Restriction of Hazardous Substance Directive (RoHS), which manages the use of hazardous materials found in electronics components.

IEC 60509 Ingress Protection Code
Many products are situated outdoors and need to operate reliably across weather extremes. This standard sets out the requirements for electrical enclosures to avoid intrusion by water, dust and accidental contact.
UL924 Standard for Emergency Lighting and Power Equipment

MISRA C Software Development Guidelines
This is not a standard as such but operates in the same way, guiding best practices in code safety, security, portability and reliability. We follow these guidelines for all our software .

Product Standards

Electromagnetic standards

Electromagnetic Radiation

EMC Emissions (C-Tick, CE, FCC)

All electronics devices either emit radiation on purpose, for communication, or have the potential to radiate unintentionally.

There are a wide range of regulations to ensure electrical devices do not interfere with other products. The main ones we are familiar with include:

CISPR11 (ISM)
CISPR12 (vehicles)
CISPR14 (household)
CISPR22 (IT)
EN61000-1 (general)
EN61000-2-1 (conducted)
EN61000-2-3 (radiated)
EN61000-3-2 (harmonics)
EN61000-3-5 (flicker)

EMC Immunity (CE and Safety Critical)

Some devices in critical situations (such as medical) must be designed to ensure they are immune to interference from electromagnetic radiation, and the European Union demands this as a general character of good product performance. Relevant standards include:

EN61000-4-3 (radiated)
EN61000-4-4 (transient)
EN61000-4-5 (surge)
EN61000-4-6 (conducted)
EN61000-4-7 (harmonics)
EN61000-4-8 (magnetic)
EN61000-4-9 (pulse)
EN61000-4-11 (dips)

ESD

Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) can cause faults in equipment through component failure. The relevant standard is:

EN61000-4-2 ESD

Speciality Areas

Medical Devices: There are a range of Medical Engineering Standards listed on our Medical Device Development. We put these standards into context in our whitepaper on What you Need to Know Before Developing Electronic Medical Devices.

Aerospace & Military: There are a range of standards specific to the aerospace and military industries we are familiar with, including RTCA DO-160, RTCA DO-178, RTCA DO-254 and MIL-STD-810.

Specialty Standards

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