On August 25, 2022, the FCC issued the latest announcement. From now on, all FCC Part 15 FCC ID application materials must provide antenna information or antenna reports, including the maximum gain, antenna pattern, and pictures or drawing and other information used to identify the internal antenna of the device. The report will no longer accept the customer's claim of antenna gain. Therefore, all kinds of WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Lora, UWB and other products that do not have access to the Internet need to provide antenna reports that meet the requirements.

In addition to the Part 15 standard: Any common standard that needs to be tested, such as the common FCC part 15.225, 15.227, 15.229, 15.231, 15.239, 15.249 and other standards, although there is no requirement to provide antenna information or antenna reports, but it still needs to show antenna photo, size and other information in the report or on the product photo.

In particular, due to confidentiality requirements, it is necessary to exclude relevant confidential information, such as design principles, etc. It can be deleted from the report or the entire antenna report can be kept confidential. But information on antenna gain is public, and if the antenna report contains only maximum gain, antenna patterns, pictures or drawings used to identify the antenna inside the device, the FCC is not considered confidential.

The official notification is as follows:

URGENT CLARIFICATION - FCC Area of Concern-Antenna Gain Information

 Please see the updated notice regarding Antenna Gain Information

Any applications granted after August 25, 2022 that do not contain the proper antenna information will be dismissed.

This email is to bring to your attention that while the FCC has been advising test labs and TCBs to make sure part 15 applications includes antenna gain data sheets and/or test reports, it is evident by recent audits that this information is being omitted.

We are still finding reports that state, "antenna gain information is declared by the manufacturer", with no other supporting information. As we have re-iterated during the last TCB workshop, this statement will not suffice. All part 15 applications will need to show how the antenna gain was derived either from a manufacturer data sheet or a measurement. Where the gain of the antenna is inherently accounted for as a result of the measurement, such as field strength measurements on a part 15.249 or 15.231 device, so the gain does not necessarily need to be verified. However, enough information regarding the construction of the antenna shall be provided. Such information maybe photographs, length of wire antenna etc. 

The antenna gain information shall be made public (not confidential). Any proprietary information such as construction maybe stripped from the gain information report and held confidential. The main antenna information we require is the maximum gain of the antenna for the band of operation. This information must be provided as a data sheet or a measurement report.

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