EMC challenges for the era of massive Internet of Things

The technical development towards the full vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to reach its full potential by the coming 5G wireless technologies. This will open up for so called massive IoT characterized by very large co-location densities. This development will affect the area of Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) in a number of ways and may even be the most challenging issue for the EMC area since it was born for over 100 years ago. The challenges that emerge as a result of the mass increase of wirelessly consumer devices, dense co-located, working in new frequency bands and in scenarios characterized by being highly dynamic, flexible and non-predictable, will be complex and will require new EMC equipment, theoretical models and methodologies for EMC analysis and testing to be developed. In this paper, some of these new challenges are highlighted and discussed. Furthermore, numerical results from some dense co-location scenarios are presented to show examples of interference challenges to be handled.