protected static function _utf162utf8($utf16)
    {
        // Check for mb extension otherwise do by hand.
        if (function_exists('mb_convert_encoding')) {
            return mb_convert_encoding($utf16, 'UTF-8', 'UTF-16');
        }

        $bytes = (ord($utf16{0}) << 8) | ord($utf16{1});

        switch (true) {
            case ((0x7F & $bytes) == $bytes):
                // this case should never be reached, because we are in ASCII range
                // see: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#utf-8
                return chr(0x7F & $bytes);

            case (0x07FF & $bytes) == $bytes:
                // return a 2-byte UTF-8 character
                // see: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#utf-8
                return chr(0xC0 | (($bytes >> 6) & 0x1F))
                     . chr(0x80 | ($bytes & 0x3F));

            case (0xFFFF & $bytes) == $bytes:
                // return a 3-byte UTF-8 character
                // see: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#utf-8
                return chr(0xE0 | (($bytes >> 12) & 0x0F))
                     . chr(0x80 | (($bytes >> 6) & 0x3F))
                     . chr(0x80 | ($bytes & 0x3F));
        }

        // ignoring UTF-32 for now, sorry
        return '';
    }