HOW 5G NETWORK EXACTLY WORKS?

The 5^th generation of cellular equipment, 5G, is the next great bound in speed used for wireless devices. This speed includes both the rate mobile users can download data to their devices and the latency,

Or lag, they experience between sending and receiving information. 5G targets to bring data rates that are ten to a hundred times quicker than existing 4G nets.

Users must assume to see the transfer speeds on the order of (Gb/s) per second, much better than the tens of (Mb/s) second speeds of 4G.

"That's significant because it will enable new applications that are just not possible today,"

Said Harish Krishnaswamy, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University in New York.

FACT:

"At GB/second data rates, you could potentially download a movie to your phone or tablet in a matter of seconds. Those types of data rates could enable virtual reality applications or autonomous driving cars."

Apart from requiring high data rates, emerging technologies that interact with the user's environment like augmented reality or self-driving cars will also require extremely low latency.

For that reason, the goal of 5G is to achieve lateness below the 1-millisecond mark. Mobile devices will be capable to send and receive info in less than 1000^th of a second, viewing rapid to the user. To accomplish these speeds, the roll-out of 5G requires new technology and infrastructure.

"With a massive amount of antennas — tens to hundreds of antennas at each base station — you can serve many different users at the same, increasing the data rate,"

-Said Krishnaswamy.

FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW:

At the Columbia high-Speed and Millimeter-wave IC (COSMIC) lab, Krishnaswamy and his crew calculated chips that allow both millimeter-wave and MIMO equipment.

"Millimeter-wave and massive MIMO are the two biggest technologies 5G will use to deliver the higher data rates and lower latency we expect to see."

Although 5G will require more base stations, they'll be much smaller and require less power than traditional cell towers.

IS 5G DANGEROUS?

Although 5G may improve our day to day lives, some consumers have voiced concerns about potential health hazards. Many of these concerns are over 5G's use of higher energy millimeter-wave radiation.

"radio-active energy is unsafe as it can breakdown chemical bonds."

Ionizing radiation is the reason we wear sunscreen outside because short-wavelength ultraviolet light from the sky has enough energy to knock electrons from their atoms,

Damaging skin cells and DNA. Millimeter waves, on the other hand, are non-ionizing because they have longer wavelengths and not enough energy to damage cells directly.

"Cause of global warming is Non-ionizing radiation”

"At high exposure levels, radio frequency (RF) energy can indeed be hazardous, producing burns or other thermal damage,

But these exposures are typically incurred only in occupational settings near high-powered radio frequency transmitters, or sometimes in medical procedures gone awry."

-Foster said who has studied the health effects of radio waves for nearly 50 years?

Many of the public's outcries over the adoption of 5G echo concerns over previous generations of cellular technology. Skeptics believe exposure to non-ionizing radiation may still be responsible for a range of illnesses,

From brain tumors to chronic headaches. Over the years, there have been thousands of studies investigating these concerns.

FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW:

In 2018, the National Toxicology Program released a decade-long study that found some evidence of an increase in brain and adrenal gland tumors in male rats exposed to the RF radiation emitted by 2G and 3G cellphones,

But not in mice or female rats. The animals were exposed to levels of radiation four times higher than the maximum level permitted for human exposure.

-Foster said

Although he disagrees with many of the conclusions skeptics have about previous generations of cellular networks, Foster agrees that we need more studies on the potential health effects of 5G networks.