Standards Advisory and Coordination Committee (SACCOM)

EMC-S SACCom Activities Update
By Elya B. Joffe – SACCom Chair

RAC_SAC.jpg (436516 bytes)
Attendees at this year's annual RAC/SACCom luncheon included (front row left to right) Brian Farmer of SENTEL, Fred Heather of the US Navy at Pax River, Bill Ritenour of EMC Compliance LLC, Dave Case of Cisco Systems who is the RAC Chairman, Mike Oliver of Instrument Specialties, Eric Borgstrom of TUV Product Service, Bob Brook of Brook Electromagnetics, and Ghery Pettit of Intel. Standing (left to right) are Henry Benitez of Intel, Ed Bronaugh of EdB EMC Consultants, Bob Hofmann of Lucent Technologies, Mark Montrose of Montrose Compliance Services, Jose Perini, Noel Sargent of NASA, and SACCom chair, Elya Joffe of KTM Project Engineering.
Photo by Dick Ford.

An Introduction to SACCom

The world of EMC Standardization is flooded with a multitude of organizations in-volved in the development of EMC Standards. Some of those organizations are "specialized" in their application and thus develop EMC standards in a narrow field, e.g., ITI TC5 (Information Tech-nology Equipment) and SAE AE-4 (Aerospace Equipment), to mention a few.

Other organizations, however, develop general, wide spectrum EMC Standards which could be applied to a broad range of equipment and systems, the most commonly known are the IEC TC-77 (International Electrotechnical Commission) and CENELEC SC-210A (European Organization for Electrotechnical Standardization).

But regardless of the scope of the various organizations, it is evident that with this multitude of EMC Standardization activities, the duplication of efforts and the contradiction between EMC Standards are almost inevitable.

That is where the EMCS Standards Advisory and Coordination Committee (SACCom) comes into the picture.

The scope of SACCom is to monitor the activities of other standards developing organizations with a view toward making recommendations to the EMCS Board of Directors on any required coordination of those activities within the Society. Thus, the Committee provides a technical liaison between the IEEE EMC Society Standards Committee and other entities involved with EMC standards activities.

SACCom Representatives provide technical liaison between the various non-IEEE standards organizations by serving as an active member of the subject committee. In particular, the representative position is meant to provide a conduit for information of mutual interest between the particular entity and the EMCS Standards Committee.

Reports are provided regularly, mostly before SACCom meetings, and are compiled into a "Compiled Report".

The intention of those reports is to provide an overall picture of the standardization activities worldwide thereby enabling one to identify any parallel activities which may benefit from each other.

Distribution of the Compiled Reports include:

During the Committee meetings, representatives who are present provide an updated report and often discussion follows as overlapping or common activities are presented.

Representatives

Current SACCom membership represents over 20 EMC and EMC-related standardization organizations, namely: Department of Defense, ANSI C63, CISPR A, B, C, D, E and G, H, RTCA SC 135, 177, SAE AE-4, ITIC/ITI TC5, ECMA/TC-20, IEC TC-66/SC66A, ISO TC22/SC3 WG3, IEC TC-77, CIGRE, ETSI TC-EMC/Radio Matters (ERM), Electrostatic Discharge Association, IEC TC46, EIA R1/R2, G46 and ASTM D09.12.

In recognition that there are many, many more EMC-related standardization organizations, an effort has been made to expand the "coverage" of SACCom to additional entities.

In fact, at the August committee meeting which took place during the 2000 IEEE International Symposium on EMC, in Washington DC, representatives from two new organizations joined the Committee, namely: TC20, SC14, WG1 (Space Systems) and RRSNA (Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology Society of North America).

There are currently still openings for representatives to the following three organizations:

In addition, representatives of other organizations, not included on this list, but who are active in the field of EMC, are encouraged to volunteer to the Committee.

A Report from the August, 2000 Meeting

The Committee held its third meeting on August 21, 2000, during the Sym-posium. 14 members and guests attended the meeting.

During the meeting, representatives present provided their reports. A most interesting discussion was initiated when Mike Oliver, SAE-AE/4 and ASTM D09.12 representative, presented the activities on those committees on the topic of EMI Shielding. It seems that those activities overlap, to an extent, the IEEE EMCS Standards 299 and 1530, and thus – interaction between the representatives and working groups may save effort and time for both organizations. This is a clear win-win situation.

After all, this is one of the main objectives of SACCom.

Summary

In summary, the SACCom activities are ever increasing and productive, and I wish to thank all those who support the activities of the Committee and assist in its development and productivity.

If you are interested in joining SACCom or exploring the possibilities of contribution to its activities (and benefiting from its outcomes), please contact Elya B. Joffe, SACCom Chair.

He may be reached at Tel: +972-52-783793 (GMT+2), e-mail eb.joffe@ieee.org . EMC

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