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Witnessed test service speeds microwave approvals

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Nov 21, 2005

RFI Global Services has developed a witnessed test service for microwave fixed link radio product approvals.

RFI Global Services has developed a witnessed test service for microwave fixed link radio product approvals, and over the past 6 months has been delivering this service to a number of customers in North America and other global locations.

There are inherent difficulties in transporting microwave fixed link equipment due to the size and complexities that make up the system, including extremely fragile and precise components.

Because of this and customers' reluctance to transport and reassemble/configure equipment, RFI decided to develop a service where it would ship its own test equipment and consultant to the customer's site where the testing and approval could be carried out under RFI's ISO17025 off-site accreditation.

To further reduce customer costs RFI took this to the next logical step, using customers' test equipment (with the appropriate calibrations) to carry out the testing.

RFI would simply send an appropriate consultant to perform the tests and generate the reports.

RFI offered this for service for a number of years with great success and has worked with many customers worldwide and in particular in North America.

In addition to this, more recently RFI introduced a witnessed testing service.

This is where the appropriate RFI consultant travels to the customer's site and closely watches the customer's own engineer perform tests to the target product using the appropriate calibrated test equipment and procedures.

The RFI expert observes and documents the testing.

The engineer writes his/her own report which is then sent to a notified body for opinion and approval.

Based on the witnessed test report a notified body is able to assess with confidence the integrity of the testing.

This new service is meeting with increasing popularity and has considerably reduced the cost and time taken for testing and approvals for RFI's microwave fixed link customers.