The
debate over whether electromagnetic fields (EMFs) exposure poses
a danger to human health is recurring and goes back centuries to
when our society first began to rely on electricity [1].
The advent of wireless cellular networks, a few decades ago,
further fueled such a controversy. Traditionally, citizens have
complained against the installation of base station sites,
especially when in close proximity to their homes, despite the
fact that no clear causal correlation between legally compliant
exposure levels from cellular towers and health diseases has
been scientifically demonstrated to date [2].
Yet, that dispute has
recently reached new heights with the ongoing deployment of 5G
antennas in the era of social media. Online communities made up
of avid opponents against 5G networks have appeared in several
countries and, in some cases, have even been responsible for
violent reactions, such as arson attacks on base station sites
[3]. Why is it that the debate about the danger of 5G has so
fiercely resumed? One important reason lies in the expected
increase in the number of distributed (small) base station
sites—almost a 10× factor in the next half a dozen years (see
the predictions from wireless communications industry [4]).
On the one hand, antenna densification is a key step toward
supporting new services that require huge throughput, very low
latency, and effective coverage of high-density user areas,
including residential districts, shopping malls, airports,
train/bus stations, and so on. However, on the other hand,
quoting one among the many Stop-5G sites [5], 5G requires
significantly more cell towers, which will increase involuntary
exposure to wireless radiation in our communities.
This allegation is supported by apparently straightforward and
intuitive reasoning: each base station is a source of radiation;
densification implies installing a huge number of base stations;
therefore, dense 5G networks notably increase radiation over the
territory. However, intuition eventually suggests that it should
be quite the opposite! For an extreme analogy, when listening to
music in a large park, would you really prefer to be in the
vicinity of one large, extremely loud amplifier that is designed
to cover the entire area, or rather walk through multiple small
speakers scattered capillary throughout the park?
The goal of the article is to shed some light on this matter and
show that the whole densification debate is ill-poised. We use
very simple (but still quantitative) arguments—designed to be
understandable also by the reader with basic knowledge of
wireless networks. In the next sections, we will specifically
address the following questions.
Q1: What is
cellular densification and why is needed by 5G?
Q2: How does 5G densification change our understanding of
exposure?
Q3: How does 5G densification affect exposure over the
territory?
Q4: Which is the impact of 5G densification on exposure at
selected locations (e.g., in close proximity to the base station
and/or and at the cell edge)?
Q5: How does 5G densification affect exposure to the population?
The reader
interested in more in-depth insights may refer to Section VI,
which clarifies why antenna densification is also instrumental
in reducing exposure from other 5G-specific features (such as
mm-Wave frequencies, beamforming, and massive Internet-of-Things
(IoT) device deployment) and how 5G densification is implemented
in commercial networks. Moreover, we report in the Appendix a
technical overview of our methodology, including a detailed
description on how to reproduce our results. Read more at:
Do Dense 5G Networks Increase Exposure to Electromagnetic
Fields?
TACS: Will
5G Be Bad for Our Health? |
