Disklabs Testing Regime

In the autumn of 2021, Disklabs undertook RF Shielding Effectiveness tests in general accordance with MIL STD 285.These tests were undertaken by an independent specialist EMC test laboratory, AQL EMC Ltd who are a UKAS accredited testing laboratory, No 0018.

AQL are widely acknowledged as specialists in the domain of EMC testing and have completed multiple RF Attenuation projects, both qualification testing and in support of research projects for numerous government departments, MOD and global corporations.

AQL tests were performed on Disklabs faraday bags as finished articles as against tests that have been performed on faraday material only. This method of testing on completed faraday bags provided a “real world” performance indication of RF Shielding Effectiveness.

Faraday Testing

All of Disklabs Faraday bags are tested independently, if you wish to find out more about our latest testing results please contact us faraday@disklabs.com

What signals do Disklabs faraday bags block?

Disklabs faraday bags block all the following Signals: –

125kHz – Contactless Card / RFID
134.2kHz – Contactless Card / RFID
13.56MHz – Contactless Card / RFID
150MHz – VHF Portable Comms
390MHz – TETRA Comms (Emergency / MOD radios)
450MHz – UHF Portable Comms
850MHz – UTMS (new ESN emergency comms network)
940MHz – Mobile Phones – First Generation particularly USA
1.4GHz – Mobile Phones – Second / Third Generation
1.8GHz – Mobile Phones – Third Generation
2.1GHz – Mobile Phones – Fourth / Fifth Generation
2.3GHz – Mobile Phones – Fourth / Fifth Generation
2.4GHz – WiFI (Commonly known as 2GHz WiFi)
2.6GHz – 4G Mobile Data
3.4GHz – 5G Mobile Data
5GHz – WiFi (Commonly known as 5GHz WiFi)
11GHz – Radar
34GHz – Military Radar

Faraday Bad Testing 2016 Report

Overview

Following the conception of small electronic devices and their applications in recent times, there is the growing need to determine and test the shielding properties or shielding effectiveness (SE) of their enclosures. In this paper, we discuss how a reverberation chamber technique employing a comb generator can be used to measure the shielding SE of such enclosure.

The comb generator has been a necessary test instrument for electromagnetic (EMC) test labs over the years and because of its ease of operation, it has found application in a variety of EMC test measurements such as cable loss measurement and radiation emission system test.

We present here the result of testing the SE of a Faraday enclosure bag in a small RC-like cavity employing a broadband bowtie receive antenna and the same test procedure conducted at 1 meter distance from a receive antenna in a standard mode stirred reverberation chamber (MSRC). The striking positive correlation between these test results seem to suggest that SE tests of Faraday bag can be conducted in an RC-like cavity which is significantly less costly and offers a cheap alternative.

Faraday Bad Testing 2014 Report

Overview

These initial results are for only the Tablet Shields. The photographs of the bags are presented in figure 1 and figure 2 respectively, to disambiguate which product is being tested. A bow tie antenna constructed from enameled copper wire was used in order to provide a source with a wider bandwidth than that of a dipole. Noise level tests of various types were performed without the antenna and with a load instead.

These provide a baseline for measurements. When results were found to be noisier than expected, extra copper tape was added to cover the opening where the cable driving the antenna from the VNA entered the bag. (Clearly in real applications the source would be fully enclosed.). The shielding effectiveness results compare the “naked” (unshielded) antenna with the shielded antenna. The test method was to measure the shielding effectiveness by taking the difference between the exposed antenna and the antenna enveloped in the bag when placed in a reverberation chamber, as undertaken in previous tests.

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