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I'm writing this masterpiece on a laptop in my living room about twenty feet from our home office. The plan was to install a wireless communications module on the thing. I would then be able to use the printer in the office, access the Internet — all that jazzy stuff. Forget it. It turned out that we can't even use WiFi. The problem is our neighbors all have wireless computer communications.

The interference causes the laptop to try hooking up with a computer, peripheral and God only knows what every thirty seconds or so. The laptop was never able to converse with the outside equipment because it didn't know the proper handshake. I guess it speaks Japanese and the equipment next door speaks Chinese. But it was causing difficulties because my system was paying attention to the hellos from across the street instead of business.

Our fellow in charge of the computers in the office has a support network that includes several computer types at the local university just down the road, and it seems our WiFi problem is not unique. The co-channel interference problem is considered employment security by the installers and network troubleshooters in our little local high-tech community.

To an EMC type this co-channel interference business has an ominous ring. First, there is the possibility of incidental rectification. With sensitive receivers and intentionally energetic transmissions the DC due to this cause could saturate the equipment so that the ones and zeros are always above the recognition threshold and therefore the system cannot recognize the modulation in the transmissions. At the least it probably raises the system noise levels. Even if the receivers can cope with the interfering signals by, say, orthogonal coding, it will require system resources to detect, demodulate and decode the signals, only some of which are addressed to and used by the system.

The lawyers and shoe salesmen that we elect to our governing bodies and unfortunately to the FCC as well (I don't think there is an engineer or scientist left at the FCC) have decided that they should set aside frequency allocations for — are you ready — computer-controlled sensor and control systems implanted inside the human body. These systems are meant to operate things like robot artifical arms, legs and I suppose such devices as heart pacemakers that adjust themselves to breathing rate and exercise levels.

Are we ready to deal with and do we have EMI standards on Compatibility and, in particular, Susceptibility for such devices? This isn't a safety standard ala the cell phones cooking our brains or the power lines interfering with our ability to procreate. This is electronic equipment interfering with electronic equipment even if we have to lard the test sample into a beef brisket to properly simulate the propogation environment. It is squirrelly within the area of expertise of the EMC engineer. Oh, I admit that the electromechanical equipment moves meat and that other equipment communicates with nerves and muscles, but the susceptibility is within the equipment, not the body.

For all the same reasons that EMC measurements on computers should be carried out by EMC people as opposed to computer design and manufacturing people, EMC measurements of electronics constructed to be imbedded in the human body should also be made by EMC measurement people.