Patent ID: 8870428

Claim:
An elongated LED lighting arrangement for emulating a tubular fluorescent lamp that provides useful general purpose illumination, comprising: a) an elongated fiberoptic light pipe extending between first and second ends; the light pipe having an exteriorly facing sidewall between said ends; the light pipe comprising solid, homogeneous optical material between said ends and being constructed to promote total internal reflection of some light between the first and second ends; b) a first LED light source comprising at least one LED tuned to efficiently provide light within a wavelength range to the light pipe, via said first end; c) light-extracting means applied to a length of said sidewall along a main path of TIR light propagation along the light pipe; the light-extracting means comprising: i) down-converting means tuned to efficiently convert light rays from said LED light source within said wavelength range to lower-energy light rays at respectively longer wavelengths; and ii) light-scattering means for extracting from the light pipe some light rays within said wavelength range without changing the wavelengths of the foregoing light; and d) the light-extracting means being arranged so that the light emitted by the down-converting means and the light-scattering means intermix to produce light, the majority of which has a composite color determined by the foregoing light emitted and the foregoing light extracted.