Testing civil aircraft and equipment to the new external RF environmental conditions

The new certification requirements for civil aircraft to demonstrate that they can operate safely in high intensity radiated fields (HIRF) have had implications for both equipment and aircraft level EMC qualification susceptibility testing. At equipment level the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) has been revising the environmental specification D0160B which covers all environmental testing including EMC. At aircraft level both EUROCAE and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) have been involved in the production of an Advisory Circular detailing the requirements and defining the environment and a Users Guide covering design, analysis and test methods for showing the aircraft is compliant with the requirements. The paper outlines the current requirements and discusses the test procedure that can be used to demonstrate compliance