RF Security Lab Ensures Wi-fi Expertise Meet Security Requirements

To assist tech firms get their wi-fi units licensed, IEEE Member Steve Liu based RF Security Laboratory in 2023. The startup, primarily based in Catonsville, Md., makes a speciality of particular absorption charge (SAR) testing, nerve stimulation testing, and measuring energy density ranges of charging docks, surgical instruments, tablets, and different merchandise. SAR testing measures the quantity of RF vitality absorbed by the human physique from a wi-fi system. Nerve stimulation and energy density exams measure the instantaneous results on an individual’s nervous system.

Liu says most of the lab’s shoppers, who’re primarily based in Japan, South Korea, and the USA, need to promote their merchandise in Canada and the USA, which have the strictest, most troublesome rules to navigate.

The lab makes a speciality of making certain wi-fi units are certifiably protected, offering customers with peace of thoughts.

“Not everybody is aware of SAR ranges are publicly out there on the FCC web site,” Liu says.

Many product builders don’t notice that when integrating Wi-Fi or 5G into a tool, they should embody shielding in opposition to radiation of their designs to guard people from extra radiation, Liu says.

“Startups and new designers of wi-fi expertise in these international locations don’t notice they’ll’t simply make a tool after which count on to have the ability to export it to North America,” he says. “Most of the time, these firms solely discover this out after they’ve already begun to market their merchandise to customers, inflicting them to be held by customs and border safety.”

If a product is discovered to be noncompliant with rules, the corporate can face important fines and authorized actions, and the system might be recalled.

From testing engineer to startup founder

Liu is not any stranger to technical requirements and rules. After graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in biomedical and electrical engineering in 2000 from Johns Hopkins College, in Baltimore, he joined PCTest Engineering Laboratory, in Columbia, Md. The corporate, now a part of Ingredient, was created to supply regulatory and testing companies to the wi-fi, electronics, and telecommunications industries.

As a testing engineer, Liu assessed merchandise’ electromagnetic compatibility, RF publicity ranges, and hearing-aid compatibility. He additionally served as a member of the Telecommunication Certification Physique, which assesses gear. He labored his manner up the profession ladder and, in 2018, was promoted to vice chairman of engineering, overseeing world compliance.

“I’ve licensed greater than 4,000 merchandise for firms together with Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, and Rivian,” Liu says. “It was a extremely superior expertise to be engaged with such giant firms and an unlimited portfolio of merchandise, though we had been a small-scale operation simply doing regulatory electromagnetic compatibility and RF safety-type testing.”

In 2020 the corporate was acquired by Ingredient, a London-based supplier of critical-materials testing, product qualification testing, inspection, and certification companies. New bosses meant a brand new tradition and a special manner of working.

“Though the brand new administration was supportive and it was a very good expertise, I felt that I couldn’t spend the time and vitality I wished to on fixing issues, serving to clients, or mentoring my staff,” Liu says. After 23 years, he left in 2023 to start out his personal firm, utilizing his private financial savings. Six of his colleagues joined his enterprise.

How wi-fi tech will get assessed

To get licensed, new wi-fi merchandise are examined in opposition to established requirements equivalent to IEEE 802.11 to make sure they meet necessities for efficiency and safety. When an organization develops a tool, it sends the expertise to a certified take a look at lab, the place technicians decide if the product is passable.

If the system is licensed, the corporate can transfer ahead with manufacturing and distribution. If it doesn’t move muster, the corporate can cease engaged on it or repair the issue and resubmit the system for certification.

When merchandise fail testing, firms retain organizations equivalent to RF Security Lab to determine what must be executed to be licensed, Liu says.

Though the startup works with giant firms together with Belkin, Rivian, and Sony, he says, most of its shoppers are new designers and small companies.

“Quite a lot of giant, tier-one firms have already got the expertise vital to repair points discovered throughout regulatory testing, so that they don’t encounter critical roadblocks except they’re growing a novel expertise,” he says. “However we’re seeing that numerous new designers should not conscious of the rules, so they arrive to us for assist.

“Many occasions they simply should be educated on the rules and informed what paperwork they should provide to get their system licensed,” he says, including that “there are instances the place we have to run our personal exams and assessments to find out how the product can adjust to rules.”

After the lab evaluates the product, it compiles a report with its findings together with suggestions on treatment any failures. Corrective measures can embody altering energy ranges, redesigning an antenna, and updating software program parameters to affect an antenna’s conduct.

Liu says that one in all his most difficult initiatives was a wi-fi endoscope developed by a bunch of medical doctors from Illinois. An endoscope is a skinny, versatile instrument with a digital camera on the tip, used to look contained in the human physique. Though small, it’s linked by way of a wire to a monitor, which the surgeon can view through the process. And working rooms have quite a few different machines with wires along with endoscopes.

The Illinois medical doctors wished to lower the variety of wires in working rooms, so that they developed a wi-fi endoscope that makes use of a high-frequency 60-gigahertz RF transmitter, which shows high-resolution pictures on a monitor.

“They constructed this attention-grabbing system however didn’t know get it licensed and the influence that testing may have on the ultimate design,” Liu says.

“Like many firms, the designers had been resourceful and bought the transmitter elements at a low price from a producer abroad,” he says. “For a regulatory certification, you might have to have the ability to configure units for sure testing functions, so the workforce and I needed to do a deep dive to search out directions on how the transmitter labored and the way it was made.” He says it was significantly difficult as a result of the transmitter wasn’t the one off-the-shelf half the designers used.

Getting the system prepared for certification required numerous collaboration among the many designers, the various half producers, and regulatory businesses.

The method took a number of months to finish because of the product’s excessive frequency, which required preapproval steering with the FCC.

“It was a really enjoyable expertise and a rewarding mission for the workforce,” Liu says. “We had fun seeing that mission by way of.”

RF Security Lab is increasing its attain and serving to firms get their units compliance-ready to be offered within the European Union. It is also engaged on getting merchandise to satisfy world cybersecurity rules.