EUROCAE ED 118

Description / Abstract: OBJECTIVE AND STATE OF THE DOCUMENT

The advance of commercial electronic devices has seen an increasing use of Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) on board aircraft by flight crew, cabin crew and passengers for various purposes, including entertainment. Such devices are not typically designed or tested to aviation standards and thereby present a new and evolving source of electromagnetic radiation with the risk of interference to aircraft systems. One of the associated issues is that, although over the years airborne equipment qualification tests for electromagnetic immunity have become progressively more severe, many aircraft, including recently manufactured types, have systems and equipment qualified to earlier standards. The immunity of these aircraft systems to interference levels beyond their designed and qualified levels must be adequately addresses in relation to PED emissions. It must be established that the use of PEDs on board the aircraft is safe by ensuring that the operation of these devices will not result in any adverse effects to airplane performance.

In addition, the latest draft of the new EU EMC directive (ref. 2002/0306 (COD) dated of the 23/12/02) is modified to exclude aircraft and associated equipment and will become law in due course. This places an obligation on the aviation community to maintain safe standards for aircraft in the light of the continuing development of new technology, particularly in the area of PEDs.

To answer the above concerns, the EUROCAE Working Group (WG) 58 has been set up to assess the safety issues relating to PEDs including the risks of interference with aircraft systems. The Terms Of Reference (T.O.R.) of this group can be found in the section 1.2 of this document. During the initial discussion, it was agreed that the group should focus on issues related to passenger carried PEDs that are not provided or controlled by the airlines/ operators. This is because there is a more significant risk associated with these types of uncontrolled devices. PEDs under the ownership of the airlines/operators, are subjected to appropriate controls and will have been assessed to the satisfaction of the responsible Airworthiness Authorities.

Passenger carried PEDs may be used ‘stand alone’ or may be used connected to onboard aircraft systems such as In Seat Power Supply System (ISPSS), Local Area Network (LAN) or Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). In any case, these PEDs are subjected to operational control such as those contained in JAR-OPS 1.110, which states:

"An operator shall not permit any person to use, and no person shall use, on board an aeroplane a portable electronic device that can adversely affect the performance of the aeroplanes system and equipment.

Therefore, if airlines or operators allow the use of PEDs by passengers on board their aircraft, procedures should be implemented to control their use and to ensure all staff are aware of the safety issues and restrictions involved. In addition, the airlines/operators must prevent any passenger misuse of PEDs - even though it is recognised that this is a difficult issue to tackle.

The aim of this document is to address the points raised in the WG 58 terms of reference, detailed in the following section.

To achieve this goal, all available data has been used (such as RTCA DO-233, recent PEDs EMC characteristics test results, aircraft data), to clearly identify the electromagnetic interference that could occur between PEDs and the aircraft electrical/electronic equipment.

The objectives of the document are to:

•Define and characterise the different types of PEDs.

• Define and characterise the sensitive aircraft systems/equipment.

• Define the coupling paths between PEDs and aircraft systems.

•Make a worst case coupling analysis to define the EMC issues and identify complementary work when needed, such as measurements on a given system or studies on additional aspects of the problems.

•Identify potential methods to deal with the identified EMC issues (technical or operational).

The above characterisations and analysis then will raise recommendations dedicated to :

• Regulation agencies such as aeronautics and communications.

•Aircraft manufacturers. ! Airlines/operators.

• The RTCA SC202

In the present state of the document, all the objectives have not been reached. The issues related to uncontrolled PEDs are numerous, and it has not been possible to fully address all the identified topics in the time scale defined by the Terms of Reference. This document reports the current results of the working group’s investigations.

The technical data presented in the document on PEDs, aircraft systems and coupling paths is sufficient to provide a solid basis for establishing a general worst case analysis which allows giving a comprehensive overview of the PED threat, identification of the main EM interference issues, and proposing methods to deal with them. Therefore, a more precise assessment of the risk needs further investigation, focusing on the issues raised by this worst case analysis, and addressing several specific issues which have not been studied.

Moreover, due to the lack of data, the scope of the document is limited to several categories of aircraft. The coupling paths analysis between a given PED and aircraft was intended to be for general aircraft use. However, it was recognised that the data originated from a limited range of aircraft types and therefore should be used with due considerations for the target aircraft type.

Hence; only general conclusions and recommendations can be made on the basis of this report. The technical content of the report has not been judged sufficient for the development of more specific guidance to airframe manufacturers, aviation equipment manufacturers, PED manufacturers, consumer electronic industry, airlines, and regulators as defined in the Terms of Reference.

The working group therefore recommends the joint development of this guidance with RTCA SC202 and the creation of a common document based on the ED118 document as a starting point. This proposed joint document should also contain an assessment of the issues defined in the Terms of Reference of WG 58 which are not addressed herein (such as the evaluation of the services which may use nonaeronautical COTS equipment and an the assessment of all new PED technologies.

Therefore, the report in its present form focuses on gathering and presenting information on PEDs and aircraft systems characterisation, and the simple worst case analysis of the potential interference between PEDs and aircraft systems and equipment. This information and analysis are intended to be a contribution of the global and more definitive assessment of the PED threat to aircraft systems, led by and in collaboration with the RTCA Special Committee SC 202.

It should hence be noted that unlike most EUROCAE publications that are endorsed by the Aviation Authorities, this report in its present form is intended as information only. This means that the data contained in this report alone will not be deemed sufficient for demonstrating compliance to Airworthiness or Operational requirements.