In A Semi-Anechoic Chamber, No One Can Hear You Scream

It’s a black art, this mitigation of noncompliant electromagnetic emissions. We can detect them. We can sort of figure out where they’re coming from generally. But how to make corrections? There is a lot of hand waving, strange muttering, and invocations of the ghosts of Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi.


All the little devices of your life emit radiation. Cell phones, MP3 players, laptops. If they merely did their jobs, they would interfere with one another and not be able to do their jobs. In every case, some black arts magicianeer made teeny tiny little changes – maybe in software, maybe in how a wire is routed, maybe in the shape of some little metallic part – changes were made so that they would not emit radiation that messes with someone else’s radiation. The FCC publishes standards and no one can sell into this market unless they meet those standards. So, the radio wave geeks do their thing. It’s just part of the job. Training applied to circumstance in return for benefits and a paycheck.


But there really aren’t many radio wave geeks left. That stuff is real hard, and there’s no particular money in it. So the rest of us hack along the best we can. Like I say, it’s part of the job.


I made this near-field probe out of spare parts, and it worked pretty well. Fundamentals have a way of remaining valid. Now I just wait for a phone call so a few of us Californians, stranded here in the great northwest, six hundred miles from home, can get together for dinner. Away from home, hungry; thus the passionless and disinterested tone of this post. Certainly not due to the lovely environment as depicted above.