James Yates

EMC — Tool

Standards placement checks

Enter your test geometry once and check the MIL-STD-461G RE103 minimum measurement distance, RS103 illumination coverage and antenna positions, plus a separate Fraunhofer-distance engineering check useful when planning DO-160 Section 20 work.

Test geometry

Largest dimension of the transmit antenna (or EUT antenna for RE103).
Largest dimension of the measurement antenna.
Width of the test setup boundary the field must cover.

λ = . RE103 rule applied: .

Where these rules come from

RE103 measures an antenna-connected transmitter's spurious emissions. MIL-STD-461G gives the distance rules this page applies: at or below 1.24 GHz, use the greater of 2D²/λ and 3λ; above 1.24 GHz, use 2D²/λ when 2.5D < d, otherwise use (D+d)²/λ.

RS103 requires the antenna at least 1 m from the setup boundary. From 2 MHz to below 200 MHz, boundaries over 3 m use multiple positions based on the boundary length divided by 3 and rounded up. From 200 MHz upward, position count is instead governed by placing the relevant EUT enclosure and cable length inside the antenna's 3 dB beamwidth. The high-frequency count below is therefore a coverage-width planning estimate.

DO-160 Section 20 uses a pre-calibrated field and section-specific setup requirements. The 2D²/λ result shown here is a separate Fraunhofer engineering check; it is not presented as a replacement test distance from the standard.

As always: these checks encode the headline geometry rules to speed up planning. The standard you're testing to — and your lab's accredited procedure — take precedence over anything on this page.