The Problem Of 5G And Future Generations Of Cellular Technology

 

"5G will kill you"

     If you're up - to - date with the latest technological developments,you have probably heard that statement before. The several stories of 5g circulating the Internet have left many excited and pumped about the coming of 5g and a few of them scared about its rumored side effects. In spite of the rumors about the health hazards of 5g caused by its higher energy radiations, the problem of 5g is inherent and will only get worse for future, more advanced generations of cellular technology.

     5g stands for "Fifth Generation of Cellular Technology" and is the latest development in the world of internet connection. By the time it is fully implemented, it is going to give us data rates as high as 10Gbps making it up to 100 times faster than 4g. Although smartphone companies across the world began employing 5g in 2019, the world's first working 5g was built as far back as in 2013 when Samsung developed the world's first 5g mmWave mobile technology with a speed of up to 1.056Gbps and could travel a distance of up to 2km.

      With 5g, it would be possible to fully maximize advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence(AI), Virtual Reality(VR) and more due to the faster processing speeds it would give to the devices based on these technologies. Infact, with 5g, it would be possible to control a robot like it were a part of your body. 5g is already here as countries like China, South Korea, USA and so on are already deploying 5g. 

       So at this point, you're probably asking "If 5g has all this benefits, what's there to worry about?" Actually, 5g has one major shortcoming. The only reason 5g is able to deliver these extremely high connection speeds is because it has high frequencies. Remember, 5g is a radio wave and not just any kind of wave, it is made up of millimetre waves. These millimetre waves have one major characteristic of being able to deliver extremely high frequencies within a range of 30 - 300 GHz. However, they are waves and the actions of all waves are defined by the formula:

                                                        V = fλ

     Mathematically, since radio waves are electromagnetic waves, the value of v is a constant (3 x 10⁸m/s) and cannot change. The value of the frequency f determines the speed of internet connections while the value of the wavelength λ determines the distance the wave can cover. Therefore, increasing the frequencies of a wave is just the same as decreasing the wavelength of the wave. Technically, what that means is that as much as this millimetre waves have very high frequencies,they also have very short wavelengths implying that they can't travel long distances at all.

     To make things worse, millimetre waves only travel within direct line of sight and so are stopped by objects like trees, walls, buildings and so on. So, for example, you can be close to a 5g cell tower and have good 5g signal,however, the moment you step behind a tree, you lose that signal. Experts are saying that to solve this problem, we would need very tall 5g cell towers and also a lot of them in every city so that you can have good constant 5g signal. However, this would be very expensive, perhaps running into billions of dollars, and would take a very long time, maybe a decade or two. In addition, since 6g and 7g will have even higher frequencies, this problem will only get worse.    

      In my opinion, we just have to be patient and gradually increase the frequencies of these cellular technology generations as they unveil. What I'm trying to say is that since it is clear that we can't just get these high speeds of internet connection without experiencing the side effects, 5g developers like Samsung, Qualcomm, Verizon, Nokia, Huawei amidst others should reduce the connection speeds of 5g and continually increase these speeds as 6g, 7g and so on are released. 

      Nevertheless, we can be certain that the world will keep moving forward and that as these generations of cellular technology evolve, maybe one day we will be able to truly make the world a global Village.