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> Under ITU and national spectrum management laws such behavior is supposed to unlawful but no one including the FCC does anything of consequence about it (once

> Under ITU and national spectrum management laws such behavior is supposed to unlawful but no one including the FCC does anything of consequence about it (once if you emitted radio noise you'd soon find radio inspectors clambering all over your equipment with RF noise detectors). Well, back then radio inspectors didn't have to fear getting shot. Snark aside: it's only getting worse every day. Temu, Wish, Alibaba, Amazon dropshippers - almost none of the stuff they sell has passed any kind of compliance audits, and they aren't even required if the device in question isn't intended to participate in RF communication. That is the real culprit... all these billions upon billions of small devices with high frequency voltage regulators that all act as (very) tiny RF emitters. And even if you'd begin to teach about shielding and EM suppression in electronics design courses, it would be pretty useless against the infamous magics of "gongkai". Just look at this $12 phone [1] - no RF shielding anywhere despite the thing literally being a cellphone. And yet if I were to order one of these, even an entire batch, chances are high no one would ever stop me. [1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/the-12-gongkai-phone/ https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/the-12-gongkai-phone/

geerlingguy 3y ago
Half the cheap little AC adapters and chargers spit out tons of noise interfering with multiple frequency ranges these days. It's quite annoying.
- hilbert42 3y ago
  Somewhere along the way EMI requirements stopped being enforced. From my observations this mostly happened in the 1980s when deregulation of the telecommunications industry happened around the world. Governments started outsourcing their Spectrum Management departments to private enterprise. These industry bodies were much less concerned with matters such as interference.
hilbert42 3y ago
"...it would be pretty useless against the infamous magics of "gongkai" True, but as I just posted to buescher we, as a society, will have to rethink the EMI problem and this will change the whole approach to electrical engineering per se. Protecting the electromagnetic spectrum will need to be considered of paramount importance (as our communications infrastructure depends on protecting it). Like chemical engineers, considering the effects of EMI pollution levels will have to become the first step in any electrical/electronic project. This also means tighter regulation and possibly new laws.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Protecting the electromagnetic spectrum will need to be considered of paramount importance (as our communications infrastructure depends on protecting it). I wouldn't be that sure. Yes, there is a lot of garbage and congestion on the spectrum, but thanks to new approaches to (forward) error correction, higher quality RF parts and especially the explosion of compute power, we can achieve ridiculous communication quality. And it's not new either - GPS is orders of magnitude below the noise floor, and yet, we got "smart collars" for cats and even birds capable of decoding that signal. Pretty much the only ones who actually have a problem with all the garbage are hams, and to a lesser extent air traffic control (for them, it's mostly people with garbage handheld radios, and dumb pilots not switching from ATC to onboard communications).

geerlingguy 3y ago

Half the cheap little AC adapters and chargers spit out tons of noise interfering with multiple frequency ranges these days. It's quite annoying.

hilbert42 3y ago
Somewhere along the way EMI requirements stopped being enforced. From my observations this mostly happened in the 1980s when deregulation of the telecommunications industry happened around the world. Governments started outsourcing their Spectrum Management departments to private enterprise. These industry bodies were much less concerned with matters such as interference.

hilbert42 3y ago

"...it would be pretty useless against the infamous magics of "gongkai" True, but as I just posted to buescher we, as a society, will have to rethink the EMI problem and this will change the whole approach to electrical engineering per se. Protecting the electromagnetic spectrum will need to be considered of paramount importance (as our communications infrastructure depends on protecting it). Like chemical engineers, considering the effects of EMI pollution levels will have to become the first step in any electrical/electronic project. This also means tighter regulation and possibly new laws.

mschuster91 3y ago
> Protecting the electromagnetic spectrum will need to be considered of paramount importance (as our communications infrastructure depends on protecting it). I wouldn't be that sure. Yes, there is a lot of garbage and congestion on the spectrum, but thanks to new approaches to (forward) error correction, higher quality RF parts and especially the explosion of compute power, we can achieve ridiculous communication quality. And it's not new either - GPS is orders of magnitude below the noise floor, and yet, we got "smart collars" for cats and even birds capable of decoding that signal. Pretty much the only ones who actually have a problem with all the garbage are hams, and to a lesser extent air traffic control (for them, it's mostly people with garbage handheld radios, and dumb pilots not switching from ATC to onboard communications).