IEC 61000: “Electromagnetic Compatibility--”

The IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) produces, roughly speaking, a gajillionity different standards. Within that extensive list, IEC 61000 is the one that tackles all of EMC. Within IEC 61000, there are only maybe a few jillion subsections. The IEC website has all the sections available for purchase; you can start with 61000-1-1 here. It is good that you can purchase only the sections you need; however the tradeoff is that if you’re a lab that deals in a wide range of test methods you may need to make a significant investment to purchase all the different official copies you’ll need. 

I should note that within the IEC, Technical Committee 77 (TC77) has the primary responsibility for IEC 61000. CISPR is another set of committees within the IEC umbrella. 

The basic structure of the numbering is IEC 61000 dash part # dash section #. The parts are broken down thusly:

Part 1: General

• Basic concepts (fundamental principles, definitions, terminology) - interference model

• Functional safety (what a safety function does and measures of it being performed satisfactorily)

• Measurement uncertainty

Part 2: Environment

• Description of the environment

• Classification of the environment

• Compatibility levels

Part 3: Limits

• Emission limits

• Immunity limits (insofar as they do not fall under the responsibility of product committees)

Part 4: Testing and measurement techniques

• Measurement techniques

• Testing techniques

Part 5: Installation and mitigation guidelines

• Installation guidelines

• Mitigation methods and devices

Part 6: Generic standards

• Generic emission and immunity requirements in various environments

[Parts 7 and 8 are not currently used]

Part 9: Miscellaneous

This may be overstating the case, but most EMC engineers will probably spend more time with the sections of Part 4 than any others. For instance, IEC 61000-4-2 has the standard test method on ESD. It’s used by the automotive industry and has recently been adopted into the MIL-STD arena by way of MIL-STD-461 Rev G, CS118. 

As with MIL-STD-461, there are so many important sub-sections of IEC 61000 that I plan on tackling them in individual articles. I may never get to them all, but over time I’ll do my best.

TIP:

MIL-STD-461 with CS118 is freely available here, and has almost identical content to 61000-4-2. They’re also both the same as ISO 10605.

---

Categories:

ANSI | CISPR | FCC | IEC | ISO | IEEE | MIL-STD | NASA | SAE | OTHER