5G – a building biology perspective

Published in the German Building Biology magazine

By Dr. Manfred Mierau

Excerpt:

5G – what is it?

5G refers to the latest generation of wireless technologies for cellular networks. This fifth generation goes well beyond basic communication between cell phones or the mobile Internet. After the first generation (1G) of analog networks (A, B, and C) in the 1960s and 1980s and the digital standards of the second generation (2G) GSM (D, E networks since 1991), the third generation (3G) UMTS/HSPA (since 2000), as well as the fourth generation (4G) LTE (since about 2010), wireless communication is now even faster (latency or response times will be about 1 millisecond).

It is not anymore just about communication from person to person, but also from person to machine as well as from machine to machine, including such applications as the Internet of Things (IoT), smart homes, autonomous driving, telemedicine, intelligent power supply, smart metering, smart farming, or smart cities. These applications have come to infiltrate our daily lives at an accelerated pace. The new model VW Golf 8, for example, is designed to be online at all times and stay connected with the cloud. This car can also talk to other cars and to the driver’s home. The goal of 5G developers and providers is the “totally connected society.”

New bandwidths, frequencies, and pulses

5G offers many new technical advancements. Besides the previously mentioned extremely fast transmission speed, data rates are also very high. With up to 10 gigabits per second – ten times more than LTE – the electromagnetic signals require a greater bandwidth. First measurements of active 5G cell antenna sites in Germany (e.g. in Düsseldorf, Cologne, or Darmstadt) showed “frequency hills” as wide as 50 or 100 MHz.

The initial 5G carrier frequencies will be not much different from the ones currently in use with 4G: Previous networks (2G, 3G, and 4G) mostly operated at 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, and 2600 MHz and networks used inside homes such as Wi-Fi/WLAN (wireless local area network) and cordless phones (DECT) at 1900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.2–5.7 GHz. 5G networks will at first mainly use 3.4–3.7 GHz, from 2021 also 2.1 GHz. In Germany, four telecommunications providers secured those frequencies (for a total revenue of ca. 6.6 billion euro) during an auction in spring 2019…SNIP

Read the full article here:  https://baubiologie-magazin.de/5g-a-building-biology-perspective/

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