European Radio Equipment Directive (RED)

Radio equipment must comply with the “essential requirements” covered in article 3 of the RED. Beside general requirements relating, for example, to the protection of health and safety covered by Article 3.1(a) and electromagnetic compatibility covered by Article 3.1(b), the RED also contains fundamental technical requirements covered by Article 3.2. While R&TTE mainly focused on radio transmitters, the new RED adds a crucial requirement and explicitly covers the receiver sections of radio equipment as well as mere radio receivers. Radio equipment must not only effectively use the radio spectrum, it must also support the efficient use of the radio spectrum to avoid interference with terrestrial and orbital communications.

In general, the RED covers all products and equipment that intentionally transmit or receive radio waves for communications or radio determination in the frequency range from almost DC to 3000 GHz. This is independent of the product’s primary function as long as it includes, for example, a cellular communications standard such as WCDMA and LTE, a non-cellular standard such as WLAN, Bluetooth and RFID, a broadcasting standard such as AM/FM, DAB, DRM and DVB-T/T2 or radar or satellite navigation for radio determination. Such radio equipment needs to achieve a minimum level of performance in terms of sensitivity and selectivity, which must be demonstrated by appropriate measurements.

The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that the radio equipment he designs and manufactures is in accordance with the essential requirements covered in Article 3 of the RED. If the radio equipment complies with the applicable harmonized standard published in the Official Journal (OJ) of the European Union, it is presumed to be in conformity with Article 3 of the directive. Several test cases described in the harmonized standards can be performed with manually operated test setups. More demanding test cases for complex radio equipment require automated test systems. Rohde & Schwarz supports a full range of test solutions to perform the required test cases.