Now things are getting interesting.
Criterion: The higher the frequency, the greater the transmitted energy.
Some of you may know that a radio signal is a wave, but at the same time, it’s also kind of like a small cannonball.
And the higher the frequency, the more energy is contained in that thing.
All right, then I’d like to finally introduce the first speaker.
He’s a household name, not just within our bubble, but far beyond it as well, because my extremely likable and universally popular
fellow MWGFD board member, the physicist Professor Werner Bergholz, is also an expert member of various investigative
commissions—such as those examining the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the states of Brandenburg and Thuringia.
He is a former professor of electrical engineering at Jacobs University in Bremen and also worked for 17
years at Siemens in Munich and Regensburg as an expert in quality and risk management.
We are eager to hear, dear Werner, what you have to say in your introductory presentation on today’s topic, titled “Mobile
Communications Technology: Physical Principles and Technical Advantages of 5G,” and
with that, I’ll turn the floor over to you.
Thank you very much, dear Ronny, for those kind words.
I did write: “Physical Principles and Technical Advantages.” But—dot, dot, dot...
First, I'm going to talk about the basics, and as I wrote in the press kit, I'll start with Adam and Eve.
And now I'm going to show you a short video where a stone is thrown into the water and you can see the ripple spreading out.
That's exactly how you can picture radio waves, and I'll say a few words about that in a moment.
Let's see if it works.
So, here's a quick recap: What is a radio wave?—just to give you a general idea.
So what's the difference between radio—which we've had for 100 years or more—and
cellular communications? Why such high frequencies?
And most importantly: Why aren't these properties of high frequencies necessarily harmless?
And the following speakers will then elaborate on this.
Okay, the stone is about to fall.
So, we've seen two things. The wave is spreading.
In that case, it is essentially a two-dimensional wave. That is the motion of matter.
And if you look closely at the still image, you can see other waves as well.
And that's exactly how it is in reality, which is also part of what makes it so dangerous.
If I have my cell phone in a room like this—and let's just assume we're not in the middle of a lecture—then there might
be 20 people or more using their smartphones at the same time, which would mean there's a jumble of signals.
It's kind of like a party.
Everyone will have to step up their intensity, and that's not necessarily something we should be aiming for right now.
Okay, so we threw a stone into the water, and we saw that the water moved.
It's much the same with radio waves.
The antenna radiates, but now not in two dimensions—rather, spherically.
And most importantly, it doesn't involve any matter—it works even in a vacuum.
And usually, you don't see anything, you don't hear anything.
And the fact that such a thing even exists and has been studied scientifically is thanks to the physicist Heinrich Hertz,
who—after suddenly cutting off a large current—set up a receiver, and that’s when it sparked
a little, which is why it’s called “sparking.”
There is one more huge difference that is very important in practice: As we have
seen, water waves travel at a speed of 20 cm/s.
Sound waves—we're familiar with those, too—travel at 300 m/s; everyone has experienced them during a thunderstorm.
You see the flash, and depending on where it was, it takes one to ten—or even
longer—seconds before you hear the thunder, 300 m/s.
Electromagnetic waves travel slightly faster—not 300 m/s, but 300,000 km/s.
So 300,000,000 m/s—a million times faster.
Of course, this is very important for practical application.
But to put that into perspective: If someone on the Moon turns on a laser, it takes about a second for us to see it here.
If the same thing were to happen on the Sun, it would take eight minutes.
So this is just to illustrate just how vast the distances in space are.
This is now the only formula: The wavelength is related to the speed of light c—300,000 km/s divided by the frequency.
That's roughly how you can picture it—so many waves wash over you.
This means that the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength.
So, the current 5G uses wavelengths in this range , and medium-wave frequencies were used in
the past—those were 1,000 meters or 1,600 meters.
The so-called shortwave frequencies were, for example, 49 meters, which was still in the kilohertz (kHz) range.
And it wasn’t until FM—ultra-shortwave, as it was called back then (though today, of course, that would still be
considered relatively long)—that we moved into the megahertz (MHz) range, that is, 1 million oscillations per second.
So, that covers a few basic points for now.
So let's keep this in mind: You can't hear or see electromagnetic waves.
Some people feel it, most don't—and neither do I.
And they spread incredibly fast, and the wavelength or frequency is not entirely unimportant.
Well, we've had radio for what seems like "an eternity and three days."
There was a central transmitter—“an eternity and three days” is roughly 100 years—many receivers, but only one transmitter, as
I said, and the flow of information went in only one direction.
And especially on the medium wave band, the bandwidth was narrow, because, after all, it was mainly
used to broadcast speech or music of modest quality.
And that brings us to one thing:
When I want to transmit information—such as speech, music, or video—I need not just a
single frequency, but a certain bandwidth.
So I have to pay for it.
When it comes to mobile communications, we don't talk about kilohertz; we started with megahertz, and now we're talking
about gigahertz—that's the range up to 6 or 8 GHz for 5G.
I'll get back to why high frequencies are so important in a moment.
So, now let's talk about cellular networks—it's clear that we have a transmitter—the base station—typically one kilometer or a
few kilometers away—with 5G, that can be as little as 100 meters—many phones acting as receivers and many phones acting as
transmitters at the same time; I already mentioned that briefly.
It makes for a nice jumble when they're all doing something at the same time.
And I always need more bandwidth and a higher data rate.
Incidentally, you can think of it in the same way as the federal budget:
That was back around 1950, when I was born—in the 100-million range, hundreds of millions.
That allowed me to finance projects worth 2–3 million.
Now we're talking about billions, and of course I'd need a federal budget of 500 billion or so.
It's kind of the same here: if I want to transfer high data rates, I need a lot more bandwidth.
Here's a typical example: with the original analog television, the bandwidth was about 5 MHz.
Digitally, only about 1 MHz and a little more.
When it comes to GHz, it depends on which bandwidth I'm using and how much data I want to transfer
at that moment, and this is handled dynamically.
So, back to bandwidth—I actually just mentioned this—analog broadcasting is prone to interference, while
digital TV and radio are resistant to interference.
But I just mentioned in passing that digital television has some minor systematic errors.
If there are any soccer fans among us, take a look next time a player—who’s short, maybe wearing something red—runs
across the green field; if you pay close attention, you’ll notice there’s always a little line around him.
That's a mistake, but it's not very noticeable.
Mathematically speaking, it's what's known as the Gibbs phenomenon—that's all I'll say about it.
So, regarding transmission—why such high frequencies? I've just explained that.
Every transmission requires a certain amount of spectrum, a frequency band.
That must not overlap with the others.
And if I have a lot of channels, then I just need a lot more bandwidth, and if I want to transfer a lot of data, even more.
So, video—as I already mentioned—MHz, lots of data, 10 to 100 MHz.
It's probably possible to do even more, depending on the situation.
Definitely 6G—though it always depends on what your specific needs are.
Okay, I'd already briefly mentioned this out loud—on purpose—because when I just tell something, people pay more
attention than when they're seeing it at the same time.
So: 100 MHz is roughly equivalent to—I need a budget of billions of euros, or I need a frequency budget of gigahertz.
And in the graph, over there on the right, you can see the bandwidths that, for example, UMTS required—that was 3G—then
LTE required significantly more, and now 5G requires even more.
And, as I said, it depends; it's handled flexibly, but that's more or less how you can picture it.
So now we have the basics, so to speak, and what comes next—let's say—are the critical points.
So that covers the basics for now. Here are the spectra again.
As you can see, 5G requires much more than 4G or LTE. By the way, LTE stands for “Long Term Evolution.”
It's a pretty meaningless thing, and it has different stages, too.
Now things are getting interesting in terms of biology or potential harm.
There is one criterion: The higher the frequency, the greater the transmitted energy.
Some of you may know that a radio signal is a wave, but at the same time, it’s also like a tiny cannonball or a
photon—in the case of light, it’s also called a photon.
And the higher the frequency, the more energy is contained in that thing.
And when this 5G wave is absorbed by my skin or my eyes, it penetrates to a certain depth and is absorbed completely.
And if I'm talking now, let's say, about 100 MHz compared to 8 GHz, that's 80 times as much
energy per energy packet that's affecting me there.
It is both a wave and a kind of packet, depending on how you look at it.
And that's the worst thing of all.
I heard someone say during a lecture or presentation, “Yeah, that’s great,” or what do we see?
Here we can see that the higher the frequency, the shallower the penetration depth.
This is the penetration depth, and this is the frequency —both are logarithmic representations.
Otherwise, you wouldn't see anything if it were linear, and we just need to remember: the higher
the frequency, the shallower the penetration depth.
This was said: “That’s good, then it won’t go in that far.”
Among other things, I am also a certified radiation safety specialist because I worked
with radioactive materials for many years.
That's when I learned that the shallower the penetration, the worse it is. Why?
The energy density—it doesn't matter whether it's radioactive ionizing radiation or non-ionizing radiation.
The shallower the penetration depth, the more energy is deposited in a given volume.
And I think that makes sense: the more energy is concentrated in a given volume, the greater the chance
that it might cause problems and result in damage.
People have actually been rather naive in saying, “Yes, ionizing radiation—of course that’s harmful—but the fact is”—and the
next speakers will surely go into this in more detail—“that there are also problems with this non-ionizing radiation.”
Well, this might just be the most important slide of all.
A shallow penetration depth is not good—it's bad.
So, on the left, we see a schematic diagram typical of 5G.
Not all 5G—that is, 5G in rural areas doesn’t work that way—but in densely built-up areas, it will work such that instead of
using a single antenna, a so-called antenna array—for example, an 8x8 array of transmitters—will
generate a beam through electrical manipulation.
But when you hear the word “beam,” you might think of a flashlight or a laser—but that’s not what it is.
While preparing for this presentation, I had to learn it myself first.
That's kind of how I had imagined it, too.
But no, that's not it —they're also called "pencil rays"—it's actually more like this: This is what's known as a polar diagram.
This shows the intensity in the direction of a certain number of individual antennas that are coordinated to transmit
together, and we're looking in the 0-degree direction—that's the main lobe; these things are also called lobes.
It isn't as localized or as directional, but it's obviously much better for this application than if it
were omnidirectional, as we saw with spherical waves.
It's aimed specifically at the person who needs it and, to some extent, their surroundings,
while the rest don't really notice it that much.
That's certainly a positive thing, but the person standing in the radiation—and that's not just him, but
perhaps also someone who happens to be standing next to him—will naturally be affected as well.
But as I said before, the bigger danger is actually your own device, at least if you hold it like this .
When you're using the hands-free feature and holding it in your hand like this, it works much better, so I highly recommend it.
Okay, so 5G operates at 700 MHz, and it says here “up to 26 GHz,” so as far as I know, 5G only goes
up to 8 GHz—just like Radio Yerevan: “It depends!”
So, if I'm in a rural area, that's where I use the lower frequencies.
Why? Because they're practically not absorbed by the air, so I don't need a base station for this area.
If I want to work with a directed beam—that is, at the highest frequencies—then, based on a rough estimate, I’ll probably
need 100 smaller base stations. That’s much more expensive.
And then there's the middle section and the narrower section.
And that's how you have to picture it. So, Vilsbiburg—it's not particularly big; I think it's more of a medium-sized town.
And when we're in a larger city, 5G—which is very likely to be available there, whether today or sometime in the
near future—will take a certain amount of time to be fully implemented from a technical standpoint.
It does cost a little money, after all.
Okay, so that's—let's say—I've just outlined the technical aspects and hinted a little at where problems might arise.
Generally speaking, I feel that the so-called precautionary principle is missing.
In the EU, it has actually been standard practice up until now to introduce a new technology only after
conducting a thorough risk analysis and risk assessment to ensure that it is, in fact, safe.
In the U.S., it's a little bit the other way around.
First you just go ahead and do it, then you see if anything happens, and if it does, you put the brakes on.
Our dear host Ronny also mentioned the COVID-19 vaccine earlier; in that case, the
precautionary principle certainly did not apply.
Even our former chancellor said, “We’re all guinea pigs.”
But I'm sure not many of those sitting here have allowed themselves to be used as guinea pigs.
And so, when it comes to mobile communications, I believe that, somewhere along the line, the
precautionary principle has not been observed.
And I was pretty much right on time with my 20 minutes.
So, to recap: Radio waves—you can't see them, they travel through a vacuum, but at an incredibly high speed.
And there's no doubt that mobile communications have useful applications—as Ronny has already pointed out.
But, as I said, the precautionary principle does actually apply.
The higher the frequency, the greater the energy input, and in densely built-up areas,
there is or will be directional radiation.
On the one hand, it's good that the overall exposure is reduced a bit, but on the other hand, it's not so good—anyone
standing in the beam is exposed to a bit more radiation.
Yes, that's it. Thank you.
Cell phone and Wi-Fi radiation harms people, animals, and the environment. We need radiation-free zones! asza.org