Accreditation of r.f. measurements: the future

In the field of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing, including r.f. testing, approximately 30 NAMAS-accredited laboratories exist in 1993. These numbers reflect the business realities of demand for, and cost of, providing accredited services, whether in-house to support other business functions, or offered to a wider market. Many r.f. measurements are relatively difficult to perform reliably, exacerbated by the interdependence of various measurement parameters, such as attenuation, impedance, power, and voltage standing wave ratio, and increasing use of complex instruments such as the automatic network analyser. The known difficulties should be a motivation to seek assurance of measurement competence, and this alone should be a clear influence on growth of accredited r.f. measurements. A number of other factors which are likely to extend the need for, and the technical range of, accreditation in the r.f. field, are discussed