Radio Equipment Directive (RED) Frequently Asked Questions

RED 2014/53/EU establishes a regulatory framework for placing radio equipment on the market in the European Union (EU). It ensures a single market for radio equipment by setting essential requirements for safety and health, electromagnetic compatibility and the efficient use of the radio spectrum.

If you manufacture end products with radio communication capabilities that ship into the EU market, you are responsible for ensuring that your products comply with RED. We provide the necessary technical support to enable you to complete your regulatory compliance obligations for your end products.

The following FAQs will help outline your obligations and our support for RED compliance.

Please refer to the European Commission’s FAQs and Guide to the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU for additional information.

Note: references to end product manufacturers are typically our clients who use our Radio Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuits (ICs) and modules in their products.

You should review RED and other referenced standards in their entirety to fully understand what is required for RED compliance. A few of these responsibilities are summarized below with respect to the end product (i.e. not our ICs or wireless modules):

• All end products with built-in radios must be assessed under RED
• You should make the updated Declaration of Conformity (DoC) available for compliant products
• The user manual for your end product must be updated with RF specifications such as frequency range, transmit output power and software version
• Your end product must meet traceability requirements by providing contact information and website address, for example
• You should be prepared for market surveillance activities and to comply with the latest regulations 

Please refer to the harmonized standards for RED for more information.

We have a long history of certifying radio module products to the latest standards and maintaining our compliance obligations with regulatory bodies worldwide, including ETSI. We are also a member of RED Compliance Association (REDCA) and have been working closely with several regulatory compliance laboratories worldwide. With regards to RED, we’ve monitored the progress of various ETSI standards (both draft and harmonized) and identified laboratories worldwide that have test and measurement systems to perform the new tests mandated by the standards.

Below is a list of standards applicable to our RF products.

Refer to the Regulatory Approval Documentation and Declaration of Conformity, which you can find on the product pages for the products you are interested in, for the applicable standards and their versions as stated in section 7. 

We strongly recommend that you take the following steps to comply with RED:

1. Familiarize yourself with RED and new standards from ETSI to identify the standards relevant to your end product.
2. Identify laboratories and begin executing RED compliance testing for your end products that utilize our RF ICs and modules. 
3. Complete compliance testing, collateral and logistical updates. 

Creating and updating collateral and making changes to packaging labels and other materials may take time. Starting early will help you reach compliance in a timely manner.

The European Commission’s Blue Guide indicates the necessary responsibilities of a manufacturer, including marking and label implementation and details for placing radio equipment into the EU market.

You can perform compliance testing in multiple ways as shown in the table below, which has been reproduced from ETSI Guide EG 203 367 V1.1.1 (2016-06).

Based on RED conformity assessment, you can perform ETSI compliance testing as follows:

1. Testing Approach #1: testing the entire end product, including the RF module, as “combined equipment”. Our RF ICs and modules are simply used as components in your end product.
2. Testing Approach #2: testing our RF module as a “radio product” shown in scenario 2 and leveraging the test results in the end product Conformity Assessment Procedure (CAP) shown in Scenario 1. Note that Section 6.1 of the ETSI Guide provides some criteria for leveraging the results. We recommend reviewing the entire document. For this approach, you should utilize the test reports and the module interface information in the product data sheet to determine what would constitute an equivalent host and which variations are allowed in the end product to determine if additional assessment is required.

You can use the conformity assessment performed for a single radio product as part of the conformity assessment for that radio product combined with a non-radio product. If the manufacturer of the combined equipment installs the radio product in a host non-radio product in equivalent assessment conditions (i.e. host equivalent to the one used for the assessment of the single radio product) according to the installation instructions for the radio product, then no additional assessment of the combined equipment against article 3.2 of RED is required.

To facilitate the above scenarios, we will provide you with the following collateral support for RED compliance.

Note that we may choose not to have some modules assessed under RED. These modules would typically be modules that do not have a shield or do not carry a CE mark today. 

A laboratory is mandatory to achieve regulatory certification. If you do not have a recognized accredited testing laboratory within your organization, then you are required to test your product through an external laboratory. For RED certification, you must ensure that your product conforms to all the RED essential requirements. You can achieve this either by testing with a harmonized standard or a non-harmonized standard. We suggest you test the end product with the harmonized standard, but for products that you need to test with a non-harmonized standard or method, you must follow an EU type-examination path while all technical details or testing reports must be reviewed by a notified body. For more details on the conformity assessment procedure, you can refer to Annex IV in the Blue Guide on the implementation of EU product rules.

The test lab expects a detailed product guide and the application of the product. Usually, the lab will request detailed design information such as the schematic, block diagram, theory of operations, application use cases, hardware samples and accessories.

For RF testing, labs do require a tool or test firmware to control the radio for a static RF test. This requires you to change some parameters such as operating channel, data rate and transmit power.

For EMC or other testing, labs require normal application firmware for use case testing.

We recommend you get in touch with the test lab in advance to identify the applicable test standards for your end product.

Once you are familiar with the relevant ETSI specifications governing RED assessment of your end product, you must schedule laboratory time for testing. Please check with the laboratory you are considering to ensure they are ready to perform RED compliance testing.

You can find an individual product's certifications on the respective product page. Certification documents are located under the Certifications category in a zip file titled "Regulatory Approval Documentation" within the Documents section.