Meeting of IEC TC106 WG9 and New Project Team for WPT Compliance Hosted by IT’IS April 10–11

Z43 was the site of the latest meeting of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Technical Committee (TC) 106 Working Group (WG) 9, held April 10 – 11 April 2018. The 2-day meeting was convened by Dr. Teruo Onishi and hosted by the IT’IS Foundation, with sponsoring by Schmid & Partner Engineering (SPEAG). The meeting included the inauguration of the new Project Team (PT) 63184, initiated by the Swiss National Committee (NC) at the October 2017 plenary meeting of TC106 in Melbourne, Australia to formulate the basic standard for exposure to wireless power transfer (WPT) systems over the frequency range 1 kHz – 10 MHz.

The work of PT63184 is very important, as there is scant scientific literature about the methodology of compliance testing of WPT technologies operating in the 3 kHz – 10 MHz range. The work on the basic standard for exposure assessments of WPT covers models, instrumentation, numerical methods, and procedures. At the meeting, experts, in an agreement with the original Swiss proposal, re-emphasized that it is crucial that compliance with basic restrictions is demonstrated for all people, including those with medical implants. The working group decided to request a decision from the TC106 plenary regarding whether persons with implants should be included in the compliance considerations with respect to the basic restrictions.

The combined WG9 / PT63184 meeting was attended in person by 15 visiting IEC committee members, and eight more members joined the discussions via web. Niels Kuster, Sven Kühn, and Ilaria Liorni of IT'IS, and Bruno Rivara and Eugene Pikulin from SPEAG also attended the sessions. The visitors were treated to a tour of Z43 lab facilities, an overview of Zurich43 research activities, and an introduction to the Sim4Life computational life sciences platform developed by IT'IS partner ZMT Zurich MedTech AG.

IT’IS is proud to have hosted the meeting of WG9 and PT63184 and of their role in the important work of the IEC in preparation for emerging wireless mobile technologies.