The problem of interference with radio activated key entry (RAKE) devices for vehicles has been a long-term EMC subject. Here are a few samples.

MYSTERY IN BREMERTON: Why don't keyless remotes work?

(Kitsap Sun, March 24, 2001)

Something has caused almost all the devices to stop working in Bremerton.

Joel Maimon of Port Ludlow first noticed the problem when he arrived in Bremerton for work Thursday morning. No matter how many times he clicked the remote keyless entry device for his car, it wouldn't work. He wasn't alone. Art DeCamp, service manager for Haselwood Expo Buick Pontiac dealership in Bremerton, first realized something was amiss Wednesday afternoon when a flood of customers began calling with the same problem. By Thursday, virtually every new car dealership in the Bremerton-Port Orchard area was inundated with hundreds of similar calls from upset customers. The outage also affected unsold new cars sitting on their lots.

The cause of the bizarre problem was - and still is - a mystery. No one so far has been able to explain why the remote keyless entry systems on nearly every vehicle in the Bremerton-Port Orchard suddenly stopped functioning at about the same time Wednesday afternoon and hasn't worked since. ""It's strange,"" DeCamp said. ""A lot of people are really upset.""

Speculation about the cause has ranged from solar flares to the Mir space station or possible interference from USS Carl Vinson or some other local Navy ship. But Navy officials say there's no evidence that a naval vessel is causing the problem, and experts say such a localized problem couldn't be caused by solar activity. A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., which regulates radio-controlled devices, said the agency will look into the problem if it persists.

The malfunction, which seems to afflict all makes and models of new vehicles, disappears as soon as a car is driven outside the area. Although a few vehicles with remote entry seem to be immune to the problem, the vast majority are affected by the outage. Larry Sharrett, general manager of the Parr Auto Group, said all new cars at the group's Bremerton dealerships are affected, whether foreign or domestic. ""It's across the board,"" he said. ""I simply have no idea what's causing it.""

DeCamp said remote keyless entry devices use a radio signal in the 300- to 500-megahertz range. When the ""lock"" or ""unlock"" button is pushed on a handheld device, it transmits a signal to a receiver in the car that operates the doors. But in the Bremerton area, ""something is keeping it from working by not allowing the signal to do what it needs to do,"" DeCamp said. The problem started at almost exactly the same time the carrier Carl Vinson was returning to Bremerton from seven weeks at sea, causing service managers at some car dealerships to suspect radio emissions from the ship are somehow to blame. But the ship's communication experts checked the ship and could find no evidence that it was the source of the problem.

""We've checked all of our radars and communication suites and the ship doesn't appear to be emitting any frequencies that might have an effect on these remote control devices,"" ship's spokesman Lt. Matt O'Neal said. Daphne Burke, spokeswoman for Naval Station Bremerton, said there is no evidence that any Navy ship or shore facility is to blame for the mysterious malfunction. ""We've been looking ... but we have no answer,"" she said. ""We're going to continue to check until the problem goes away or until they find something out.""

Solar flares, also suspected as a possible cause, have been ruled out because of the pattern of the outage. Joe Kunches, acting chief of the Space Weather Operations Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said intense solar activity can cause global radio interference. But it wouldn't cause such a localized problem, he said, nor would it persist for more than an hour or two if solar activity was the source. And it definitely wouldn't continue after the sun goes down.

John Winston, spokesman for the FCC in Washington, D.C., said the problem could be caused ""by any one of a number of things."" He said if the problem persists, an agency investigator will be assigned to look into it. Meanwhile, it's time to relearn how to use car keys.

The story continued to run, and a few days later:

KEYLESS REMOTE ENTRIES: Mystery outage draws attention

(Kitsap Sun, March 30, 2001)

People around the globe are fascinated with Bremerton's tale of a bizarre electronic failure. The widespread failure of keyless remote entries on vehicles around Bremerton last week has sparked interest far beyond the local community - thanks to the ubiquity of the World Wide Web and nationally syndicated talk radio. Since the story first ran Saturday in The Sun, it has been broadcast by two nationwide radio programs that focus on bizarre phenomena - ""Coast to Coast with Art Bell"" and ""The Jeff Rense Show."" It also has been posted on numerous Web sites, including The Sun's (www.thesunlink.com), and reprinted in other newspapers. The widespread posting has fueled a flood of responses from all over the country - and even from as far away as Russia and Croatia.

Meanwhile, the strange incident remains a hot topic in West Sound as residents try to solve the mystery and add to the list of impacts beyond the mass failure of remote entry devices. The outage, which went from about 4 p.m. March 21 until about 6:30 a.m. Monday, apparently was caused by interference with the short-range UHF radio signals transmitted by small hand-held keyless remote devices to an unlocking receiver in the vehicle. The source of that interference remains a mystery, however.

The Federal Communication Commission believes the local military presence is ""very possibly"" the source of the disruption, said a government official familiar with the agency's investigation into the outage. Although Navy officials still insist they can find no link between the interference and USS Carl Vinson's recent return to Bremerton, most responses sent to The Sun reflect a widespread belief that the military presence is to blame for the disruption. They also question whether the interference might have caused other problems - and that still might be occurring.

Some samples of responses:

An ex-Navy technician wrote: ""You know as well as I do that an active electronic countermeasures (ECM) was inadvertently left aboard a ship docked at the shipyard, causing remote car lock devices to be inoperative. That's what 'jammers' are supposed to do. It is not a coincidence that the effect occurred when (USS) Carl Vinson arrived, and then when the sailors went back to the ship Monday and took a good look around, they turned it off.""

A computer buff in Izakovic, Croatia, wrote that electromagnetic emissions from U.S. Navy warships fry his Internet modem whenever they pull into the local harbor. He now is on his fourth modem and suspects that similar emissions caused the interference in the Bremerton area. ""Bremerton mystery is not a mystery at all. U.S. Navy has in operation VTRPE radar and IR/visual/radar satellite detection shielding technology (which causes the problem).""

Two Bremerton readers reported that something has been interfering periodically with the radio signal that controls their household atomic clocks. The clocks display the exact time, as broadcast continually over several radio frequencies between 2.5 and 20 megahertz from a transmitter in Colorado that is linked to the U.S. Naval Observatory's atomic clock. One clock owner said the problem has persisted intermittently even after the keyless remotes began working again Monday.

Other readers reported problems with TV reception, car alarms and computer microchips in Bremerton and Port Orchard last week during the period of disruption.

Employees of state and local government agencies reported that their radio systems experience periodic failures in the Bremerton and Bangor areas. ""We've called (PSNS), and they won't tell us one way or the other,"" one respondent wrote via e-mail. ""If we knew when they were testing it would help.""

A respondent who identified himself as a ""Russian geophysicist"" sent an e-mail from Moscow suggesting other possible sources of the disruption, such as rogue TV signals or police communications gear.

(NB see elsewhere about the USS Carl Vinson's activities)

Drivers stranded by car signals

(BBC News 1 November 2007)

More than a dozen motorists were left stuck in a car park when a car's central locking system malfunctioned and blocked drivers' key fobs. Some cars failed to start on Tuesday in Parrock Street car park, in Gravesend, Kent, while others would not unlock. Stranded drivers were left to call motoring organisations for help.

However Gravesend Borough Council had been investigating similar problems in the car park for weeks. Finally Ofcom was called and the offending car found. A spokesman said "weeks of sleuthing" by council officers had them looking for a rogue transmitter or wireless broadband unit in nearby offices. Staff also checked all transmissions in and around the car park, because of nearby communications at the town's Civic Centre and police station. A recently-installed system transmitting car park usage each minute to display signs across Gravesend was also checked.

"All the time the situation seemed to be worsening with the last straw this week when more than a dozen motorists were stuck," he added. He said alarms had been going off, and drivers had experienced "mysterious and sporadic" difficulties with car locks. Some people tried replacing their fob batteries, he added.

Ofcom was finally called and a survey found a small family car was intermittently sending out signals blocking other fobs in a 164ft (50 m) radius. A notice was placed on the car informing the owner - a commuter who left his vehicle there all day. The spokesman said: "The driver was unaware of the problems his car had been causing and has now made contact with us and the problem will be fixed once and for all."

Electronic car key fobs fail on Southampton street

(BBC News 12 October 2011)

Electronic car key fobs have mysteriously stopped working along part of a Southampton street, according to residents. On Saturday people living on Dimond Road in the Bitterne Park area found their fobs would not open their cars. Madeleine Wentworth said: "It's really annoying, I don't like not knowing what's causing it."

It is thought the problem is being caused by interference with the radio frequencies used by the fobs. Brian Deadman described it as "baffling" and said his key fob worked perfectly well away from Dimond Road. Neighbours have speculated about the interference being caused by a mobile phone mast or the nearby Southampton International Airport.

An airport spokesperson said it had not changed any of its frequencies.

Ofcom, the government agency with responsibility for radio communications, said residents could contact them and log a complaint which they would investigate to pinpoint the cause of the interference. A spokesman said it was likely to be due to a signal from a malfunctioning electronic device "leaking" on to the spectrum of the key fobs. AA technical specialist Steve Evans said the motoring organisation received about 40 call-outs over key fobs not working each month in the south - usually caused by flat fob or car batteries, or radio interference. Mr Evans said: "If it is a problem with radio interference, try getting closer to the car and then try walking around the car - the receivers are placed in different places on different cars."

In the UK the problem became sufficiently serious for a committee to be formed by the Radiocommunications Agency with support from several affected organisations, to deal with it. The following is from their published guideline document, July 1997. It might be said to have been moderately successful, since more modern vehicles have key receivers that are noticeably less susceptible to blocking by nearby transmitters, which is the root cause of the problem.

Manufacturer Guidelines

Introduction

The RAKE Committee (more simply referred to as 'RAKE' in the remainder of this document) has been established in response to the increasing number of UK motorists who are experiencing problems with vehicles fitted with 433 MHz radio controlled security systems. The radio key access problem has been extensively highlighted in the UK media. RAKE comprises organisations whose members or customers are adversely affected by these problems. These include the Radio Society of Great Britain, the Motor Industry Research Association representing the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the Royal Automobile Club, the Automobile Association, the Low Power Radio Association, the Radiocommunications Agency, Sold Secure Ltd, the Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre (Thatcham), the Electronic Vehicle Security Association and the Police Scientific Development Branch. Addresses and telephone numbers of participating organisations can be found on the back cover of this document.

Failure of the 433MHz key fob transmission to gain access to the vehicle and to disable the vehicle alarm and immobiliser is resulting in motoring organisations in the UK experiencing tens of thousands of calls per year for assistance. A RAKE survey of manufacturers has revealed that more than 2 million vehicles have been sold up to the end of 1996 with a 433MHz system fitted. This is expected to increase at a rate of 1.1 million vehicles per year. These figures exclude aftermarket fitted systems. Based on the motoring organisations records to date, 3% to 5% of these vehicles will experience a problem with their 433MHz radio key security system.

Such a problem is inevitable when using an unprotected frequency for radio control of vehicle systems and when employing receiver designs which may suffer blocking in the presence of strong signals on frequencies well away from the receiver's centre frequency. Whilst, ultimately, the ideal solution must be an exclusive, primary frequency allocation for vehicle radio keys, significant improvement can be obtained through careful system design and specification. User Guidelines, at the end of this document, contain RAKE advice on measures available to a vehicle user to minimise the chances of a frequency blocking problem.

In the UK the primary users of the 433MHz frequency are government services with secondary users including amateur radio operators, traffic information systems and car key fobs. Some private and public access mobile radio networks operate close to the 433MHz band.

RAKE has collated information from around mainland Europe and has discovered that the problem is not just a UK concern. In addition to primary users, in mainland Europe the frequency is used for many other purposes including remote control of dockyard cranes, vehicle winches, cordless hi-fi systems and children's' walkie-talkies.

RAKE has three clear objectives.

Short term: to raise public awareness of radio key security systems and educate vehicle owners on how to overcome a blocking problem should it arise.

Medium term: to produce Guidelines which will help vehicle and security system manufacturers to ensure that alternative, 'user-friendly' key systems are included in all radio key security products. This does not mean less secure systems, only that the legitimate owner can access the vehicle relatively simply and conveniently should they encounter a blocking problem. RAKE will also encourage vehicle and system manufacturers to use the most appropriate technology to further protect systems from external interference.

Long term: in conjunction with the UK Radiocommunications Agency and its European counterparts, RAKE aims to establish an appropriate frequency, and ideally, one allocated solely for radio key entry systems. Radio frequencies have to be harmonised across Europe by 2008, RAKE is keen to ensure that harmonisation is right for everyone.

These Guidelines are intended to be supportive of the European Vehicle Security Directive and may assist in its interpretation.

The implications of escalating numbers of unintentionally immobilised vehicles resulting from background radio frequency (RF) interference include:

customer inconvenience and recovery costs,

poor customer perception of some vehicle manufacturers,

general discrediting of vehicle security systems.

RAKE is concerned about the:

longer term implications of the vulnerability of radio based entry and immobilisation systems to deliberate jamming,

potential for prevention of activation for criminal purposes,

prevention of access for vulnerable people.

Although RAKE has confined its investigations to RF key systems, the use of an infrared alternative is not without problems. Range reduction through bright sunlight or dirty vehicle glass and blocking by infrared floodlights, now commonly associated with urban CCTV security systems, are all possible problems with the most likely alternative to the RF key. These issues are however, beyond the current scope of RAKE.