At a recent meeting of one of the ECC committees, the need for regulations governing extremely low power Short Range Devices was raised. This related to equipment with levels of intentional radiation that were so low that they would not effect the operation of other radio services or SRD’s. Such extremely low power equipment is referred to by the European Commission as “benign devices”.

The reaction of Administrations to this topic is that they have never received a formal request for exemption of such “benign devices” so it has never been considered. In response, the LPRA offered to canvass their membership to determine whether there is a market requirement for such devices. This document has been written to seek your views on the subject.
 
It is premature to define the way in which benign devices would be permitted to operate. However it is foreseen that, below a specified intentional radiated power level, such equipment would be licence exempt and there would be no requirement to comply with the R&TTE Directive. The appropriate intentional radiated power limit will still need to be investigated in ECC if enough industry and administration support to this concept is demonstrated. Current specifications for unwanted emissions in the spurious domain as defined in ERC/REC 74-01 are considered inappropriate for these benign Short Range Devices because their emissions would be intentional and would cause interferences to LBT devices. Furthermore, it is certain that this specified power limit will vary across the spectrum and levels of around 1picowatt between 30MHz and 3GHz have been identified as a starting point.

If this concept is of interest, please let us know (info@lpra.eu). You should include details of the frequency band(s) that would be of interest to you and the intentional radiated power levels that would be acceptable. It would also be important to indicate possible areas of application and potential sales volumes.

If we receive sufficient replies from members, these will be consolidated and presented as a formal LPRA request to the ECC. Your replies should reach us by not later than 26 June.