Today I experienced my first "
Slashdotting". For the July/August, 2001 issue of FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access, I wrote an article titled Part 18 RF Lighting: A Potential "Extinction Level Event" For Communications Users Of The 2.4 GHz Band (
http://www.strohpub.com/0701feat.htm). In the article I describe a potential clash between a new lighting system that uses Radio Frequency energy (in the 2.4 GHz band) to excite a material that in turn, produces light. The good news is that such RF Lighting may ultimately be far more energy efficient (electrical power in for a given amount of light output) than conventional lighting systems such as incandecent and flourescent lighting. The bad news is that the signals emitted by the RF lighting have the potential to significantly interfere with communications use of the 2.4 GHz band, such as Wi-Fi / 802.11b. To date, the threat is real - I've received antecdotal reports of severe interference in the presence of RF Lighting systems, but mostly theoretical as only a few RF lighting systems have actually been deployed. The comments on Slashdot in response to the posting were typical for Slashdot - some interesting, insightful comments, but most weren't that clueful because they (and in fairness, most) simply don't understand ALL the issues that are involved. I decided that there simply wasn't any upside in trying to educate the Slashdot audience; there was too much "educating" to be done on the relevant issues, and there were accusations that my article was designed to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Such an accusation was simply WAY past laughable... But, the Slashdot article triggered lots of other attention, to which I'll comment in turn in following postings.
Steve Stroh
Copyright (c) 2002-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my original Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on Radio Userland. This article was backdated to May 8, 2002 from June 13, 2002.