2 Typical Certification Procedure

Figure 2-1 Typical Process of Building and Certifying an Equipment

As shown in Figure 2-1, beginning with the prototype and development phase, equipment must be designed with certification in mind to catch and avoid preventable issues later in the product life cycle. This is especially true when operating in multiple regulatory markets.

When selecting a test house, it is important to consider not only cost, but also the technical proficiency of the staff, the knowledgability of the Telecommunications Board (TCB), and the quality of the overall services provided. It can also be helpful to work with reputable test houses and TCBs in your region, as they will be the easiest to develop a relationship with for asking questions, debugging issues, and planning future projects. It is important to select a test house that you are confident in and able to work with successfully, as once testing begins, you will typically not be able to change to a different test house. This is to prevent "shopping" for a certification.

Sometimes it can be very helpful during a design process to send test samples to your test house for a pre-compliance test, also called a "pre-scan". A pre-scan is a type of initial test performed by a test house that focuses on finding gross emissions from an EUT. It is the first step done as part regular compliance testing and uses peak hold detectors and wide bandwidths to search for any emissions. If emissions are detected and the have more than the minimum margin from the limit, a final scan would not be required. However, just because a spur is observed, doesn't mean that the spur amplitude is as high as it is reported during the pre-scan. Often times it can be lower. Like previously mentioned, a pre-scan can be used to find potentially violating spurs. They are a cost-effective option to help improve board design before final release.

With the pre-scan results in mind, further device verification, validation and production can begin. The samples of the end equipment are then made available for compliance testing.

During the compliance testing, it is important to maintain contact with your test house staff on a regular basis. This can help make sure that you are able to quickly find and resolve problems as they occur, whether those problems are end-equipment knowledge gaps on the part of the TCB or potential compliance failures.

After the completion of the testing phase, the TCB often requires additional documentation to be filed and verified before issuance of the certification. Start communications with the TCB early so as to provide enough time to develop any new documents ahead of time so as to reduce cycle time and thus time to market. Often, this documentation requires signatures from a person with authorization to make statements on behalf of your firm. It is important to align internally to determine who should sign such documents. You must also align with your test house staff on which marking standards your device must follow.

After a positive review, the TCB will assist in filing relevant documents at regulatory agencies. In the case of products being sold in the European common market, this will involve a filing with a Notified Body (NB), for the FCC it is a filing with them from the Telecommunications Certification Board.

After acceptance by the FCC developer can homologate the product with the FCC logos and place the FCC ID on the product. After acceptance by the NB, the developer can add the completed standards to their Declaration of Conformity (DoC) and affix the CE logo to their product. The DoC must be made available to the public.

A DoC for products homologated with the CE marking, typically contains the following at a minimum:

• Product Name, type, serial or batch number and purpose
• The name and contact information of the manufacturer
• A compliance statement that identifies the harmonized legislation and standards used
• Details of the Notified Body
• A signature