Removal of Receiver Category 2 from European regulations

Summary

The Council of the LPRA would like to draw to the members’ attention work being carried out in CEPT SE21 (Unwanted Emissions) that could have a serious impact on some of their products. The result of this work is likely to result in the outlawing of SRD products containing Category 2 receivers (as set out in EN 300 220-2). The council would like to understand the number of products that are currently on the market that are Category 2 and what the impact of their prohibition might be.

Background

The Radio Equipment Directive includes a requirement for radio transceivers to make ‘efficient use of radio spectrum’. Under the R&TTE that generally meant that transmitters must adhere to prescribed transmission masks and reduce spurious emissions. The RED, however, brings new focus on receiver performance; the reasoning being that services are thereby able to pack into spectrum more densely and transmission retries are minimised. SE21 has extended this line of thinking and is developing a recommendation setting minimum levels of receiver blocking performance.

An earlier version of EN 300 220-2 already removed Category 3 receivers at the behest of the European Commission due to concerns over consumer devices, such as car security system systems, being blocked by nearby transmissions. Nevertheless, a draft report and recommendation created in SE21 is calling for further tightening of receiver blocking requirements for SRDs.

The LPRA council’s feeling is that this work is flawed and, in particular, is looking to set blocking requirements that are unrealistic for many consumer devices. Although a CEPT Recommendation is non-binding on national administrations, our experience is that such a recommendation – like its transmission equivalent, ERC Recommendation 70-03 – is likely to be mandated for the setting of receiver blocking levels in future European harmonised standards – including an imminent update of EN 300 220-2.

The recommendation is likely to be published in Q1 of 2024, and so we might see it be implemented in harmonised standards from April next year. The next meeting of WG SE (the parent group to SE21) will be held on 29^th January 2024.

The LPRA council will continue to oppose this work, not least because the methodology is based on an arbitrary broadband interferer (although CW test signals are also allowed), but we would like to know the impact of such a de facto tightening of the regulations on your products.

The Questions

The LPRA would like to know:

 1 Work Item SE21_24 https://eccwp.cept.org/default.aspx?groupid=46

2    https://www.cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/wg-se/se-21/client/meeting-documents/file-history/?fid=80465

All responses to these questions will be treated with the utmost of discretion and the results of the survey will be summarised in an anonymised way.

We look forward to hearing from you (please reply to LPRA Secretariat HERE).