WEBVTT 00:00.125 --> 00:01.320 Now things are getting interesting. 00:01.320 --> 00:06.117 Criterion: The higher the frequency, the greater the transmitted energy. 00:06.117 --> 00:14.020 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. 00:14.020 --> 00:19.041 And the higher the frequency, the more energy is contained in that thing. 00:19.041 --> 00:25.450 All right, then I’d like to finally introduce the first speaker. 00:25.450 --> 00:32.564 He’s a household name, not just within our bubble, but far beyond it as well, because my extremely likable and universally popular 00:32.564 --> 00:38.967 fellow MWGFD board member, the physicist Professor Werner Bergholz, is also an expert member of various investigative 00:38.967 --> 00:45.994 commissions—such as those examining the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the states of Brandenburg and Thuringia. 00:45.994 --> 00:52.085 He is a former professor of electrical engineering at Jacobs University in Bremen and also worked for 17 00:52.085 --> 00:58.017 years at Siemens in Munich and Regensburg as an expert in quality and risk management. 00:58.017 --> 01:05.524 We are eager to hear, dear Werner, what you have to say in your introductory presentation on today’s topic, titled “Mobile 01:05.524 --> 01:10.527 Communications Technology: Physical Principles and Technical Advantages of 5G,” and 01:10.527 --> 01:15.648 with that, I’ll turn the floor over to you. 01:15.648 --> 01:19.351 Thank you very much, dear Ronny, for those kind words. 01:19.351 --> 01:27.030 I did write: “Physical Principles and Technical Advantages.” But—dot, dot, dot... 01:27.030 --> 01:39.225 First, I'm going to talk about the basics, and as I wrote in the press kit, I'll start with Adam and Eve. 01:39.225 --> 01:52.224 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. 01:52.224 --> 01:58.090 That's exactly how you can picture radio waves, and I'll say a few words about that in a moment. 01:58.090 --> 02:00.361 Let's see if it works. 02:00.361 --> 02:06.688 So, here's a quick recap: What is a radio wave?—just to give you a general idea. 02:06.688 --> 02:10.841 So what's the difference between radio—which we've had for 100 years or more—and 02:10.841 --> 02:14.548 cellular communications? Why such high frequencies? 02:14.548 --> 02:22.940 And most importantly: Why aren't these properties of high frequencies necessarily harmless? 02:22.940 --> 02:27.119 And the following speakers will then elaborate on this. 02:27.119 --> 02:30.629 Okay, the stone is about to fall. 02:39.970 --> 02:45.282 So, we've seen two things. The wave is spreading. 02:45.282 --> 02:53.007 In that case, it is essentially a two-dimensional wave. That is the motion of matter. 02:53.007 --> 02:57.811 And if you look closely at the still image, you can see other waves as well. 02:57.811 --> 03:03.654 And that's exactly how it is in reality, which is also part of what makes it so dangerous. 03:03.654 --> 03:11.311 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 03:11.311 --> 03:18.419 be 20 people or more using their smartphones at the same time, which would mean there's a jumble of signals. 03:18.419 --> 03:20.394 It's kind of like a party. 03:20.394 --> 03:28.290 Everyone will have to step up their intensity, and that's not necessarily something we should be aiming for right now. 03:28.290 --> 03:33.992 Okay, so we threw a stone into the water, and we saw that the water moved. 03:33.992 --> 03:36.391 It's much the same with radio waves. 03:36.391 --> 03:44.820 The antenna radiates, but now not in two dimensions—rather, spherically. 03:44.820 --> 03:53.056 And most importantly, it doesn't involve any matter—it works even in a vacuum. 03:53.056 --> 03:58.380 And usually, you don't see anything, you don't hear anything. 03:58.380 --> 04:09.615 And the fact that such a thing even exists and has been studied scientifically is thanks to the physicist Heinrich Hertz, 04:09.615 --> 04:18.157 who—after suddenly cutting off a large current—set up a receiver, and that’s when it sparked 04:18.157 --> 04:23.910 a little, which is why it’s called “sparking.” 04:23.910 --> 04:32.665 There is one more huge difference that is very important in practice: As we have 04:32.665 --> 04:38.585 seen, water waves travel at a speed of 20 cm/s. 04:38.585 --> 04:46.657 Sound waves—we're familiar with those, too—travel at 300 m/s; everyone has experienced them during a thunderstorm. 04:46.657 --> 04:52.568 You see the flash, and depending on where it was, it takes one to ten—or even 04:52.568 --> 04:58.752 longer—seconds before you hear the thunder, 300 m/s. 04:58.752 --> 05:11.776 Electromagnetic waves travel slightly faster—not 300 m/s, but 300,000 km/s. 05:11.776 --> 05:19.916 So 300,000,000 m/s—a million times faster. 05:19.916 --> 05:24.704 Of course, this is very important for practical application. 05:24.704 --> 05:41.055 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. 05:41.055 --> 05:44.524 If the same thing were to happen on the Sun, it would take eight minutes. 05:44.524 --> 05:50.366 So this is just to illustrate just how vast the distances in space are. 05:50.366 --> 06:07.456 This is now the only formula: The wavelength is related to the speed of light c—300,000 km/s divided by the frequency. 06:07.456 --> 06:13.152 That's roughly how you can picture it—so many waves wash over you. 06:13.152 --> 06:20.089 This means that the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength. 06:20.089 --> 06:30.959 So, the current 5G uses wavelengths in this range , and medium-wave frequencies were used in 06:30.959 --> 06:36.635 the past—those were 1,000 meters or 1,600 meters. 06:36.635 --> 06:43.240 The so-called shortwave frequencies were, for example, 49 meters, which was still in the kilohertz (kHz) range. 06:43.240 --> 06:49.527 And it wasn’t until FM—ultra-shortwave, as it was called back then (though today, of course, that would still be 06:49.527 --> 06:57.968 considered relatively long)—that we moved into the megahertz (MHz) range, that is, 1 million oscillations per second. 06:57.968 --> 07:01.443 So, that covers a few basic points for now. 07:01.443 --> 07:07.808 So let's keep this in mind: You can't hear or see electromagnetic waves. 07:07.808 --> 07:10.920 Some people feel it, most don't—and neither do I. 07:10.920 --> 07:18.451 And they spread incredibly fast, and the wavelength or frequency is not entirely unimportant. 07:18.451 --> 07:22.763 Well, we've had radio for what seems like "an eternity and three days." 07:22.763 --> 07:31.458 There was a central transmitter—“an eternity and three days” is roughly 100 years—many receivers, but only one transmitter, as 07:31.458 --> 07:36.904 I said, and the flow of information went in only one direction. 07:36.904 --> 07:43.861 And especially on the medium wave band, the bandwidth was narrow, because, after all, it was mainly 07:43.861 --> 07:47.640 used to broadcast speech or music of modest quality. 07:47.640 --> 07:51.973 And that brings us to one thing: 07:51.973 --> 08:00.139 When I want to transmit information—such as speech, music, or video—I need not just a 08:00.139 --> 08:05.152 single frequency, but a certain bandwidth. 08:05.152 --> 08:06.625 So I have to pay for it. 08:06.625 --> 08:20.271 When it comes to mobile communications, we don't talk about kilohertz; we started with megahertz, and now we're talking 08:20.271 --> 08:27.687 about gigahertz—that's the range up to 6 or 8 GHz for 5G. 08:27.687 --> 08:31.406 I'll get back to why high frequencies are so important in a moment. 08:31.406 --> 08:39.321 So, now let's talk about cellular networks—it's clear that we have a transmitter—the base station—typically one kilometer or a 08:39.321 --> 08:46.985 few kilometers away—with 5G, that can be as little as 100 meters—many phones acting as receivers and many phones acting as 08:46.985 --> 08:51.684 transmitters at the same time; I already mentioned that briefly. 08:51.684 --> 08:56.036 It makes for a nice jumble when they're all doing something at the same time. 08:56.036 --> 09:02.239 And I always need more bandwidth and a higher data rate. 09:02.239 --> 09:06.543 Incidentally, you can think of it in the same way as the federal budget: 09:06.543 --> 09:16.753 That was back around 1950, when I was born—in the 100-million range, hundreds of millions. 09:16.753 --> 09:20.074 That allowed me to finance projects worth 2–3 million. 09:20.074 --> 09:27.346 Now we're talking about billions, and of course I'd need a federal budget of 500 billion or so. 09:27.346 --> 09:33.260 It's kind of the same here: if I want to transfer high data rates, I need a lot more bandwidth. 09:33.260 --> 09:42.272 Here's a typical example: with the original analog television, the bandwidth was about 5 MHz. 09:42.272 --> 09:47.712 Digitally, only about 1 MHz and a little more. 09:47.712 --> 09:53.597 When it comes to GHz, it depends on which bandwidth I'm using and how much data I want to transfer 09:53.597 --> 09:58.969 at that moment, and this is handled dynamically. 09:58.969 --> 10:06.802 So, back to bandwidth—I actually just mentioned this—analog broadcasting is prone to interference, while 10:06.802 --> 10:11.226 digital TV and radio are resistant to interference. 10:11.226 --> 10:21.608 But I just mentioned in passing that digital television has some minor systematic errors. 10:21.608 --> 10:28.680 If there are any soccer fans among us, take a look next time a player—who’s short, maybe wearing something red—runs 10:28.680 --> 10:35.428 across the green field; if you pay close attention, you’ll notice there’s always a little line around him. 10:35.428 --> 10:38.375 That's a mistake, but it's not very noticeable. 10:38.375 --> 10:43.700 Mathematically speaking, it's what's known as the Gibbs phenomenon—that's all I'll say about it. 10:43.700 --> 10:47.756 So, regarding transmission—why such high frequencies? I've just explained that. 10:47.756 --> 10:55.919 Every transmission requires a certain amount of spectrum, a frequency band. 10:55.919 --> 10:58.778 That must not overlap with the others. 10:58.778 --> 11:07.461 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. 11:07.461 --> 11:13.976 So, video—as I already mentioned—MHz, lots of data, 10 to 100 MHz. 11:13.976 --> 11:16.735 It's probably possible to do even more, depending on the situation. 11:16.735 --> 11:23.952 Definitely 6G—though it always depends on what your specific needs are. 11:26.571 --> 11:32.697 Okay, I'd already briefly mentioned this out loud—on purpose—because when I just tell something, people pay more 11:32.697 --> 11:37.500 attention than when they're seeing it at the same time. 11:37.500 --> 11:49.554 So: 100 MHz is roughly equivalent to—I need a budget of billions of euros, or I need a frequency budget of gigahertz. 11:49.554 --> 12:06.023 And in the graph, over there on the right, you can see the bandwidths that, for example, UMTS required—that was 3G—then 12:06.023 --> 12:14.974 LTE required significantly more, and now 5G requires even more. 12:14.974 --> 12:22.935 And, as I said, it depends; it's handled flexibly, but that's more or less how you can picture it. 12:22.935 --> 12:33.348 So now we have the basics, so to speak, and what comes next—let's say—are the critical points. 12:33.348 --> 12:38.925 So that covers the basics for now. Here are the spectra again. 12:38.925 --> 12:48.714 As you can see, 5G requires much more than 4G or LTE. By the way, LTE stands for “Long Term Evolution.” 12:48.714 --> 12:54.831 It's a pretty meaningless thing, and it has different stages, too. 12:54.831 --> 13:03.571 Now things are getting interesting in terms of biology or potential harm. 13:03.571 --> 13:13.473 There is one criterion: The higher the frequency, the greater the transmitted energy. 13:13.473 --> 13:24.724 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 13:24.724 --> 13:31.282 photon—in the case of light, it’s also called a photon. 13:31.282 --> 13:38.380 And the higher the frequency, the more energy is contained in that thing. 13:38.380 --> 13:53.709 And when this 5G wave is absorbed by my skin or my eyes, it penetrates to a certain depth and is absorbed completely. 13:53.709 --> 14:03.288 And if I'm talking now, let's say, about 100 MHz compared to 8 GHz, that's 80 times as much 14:03.288 --> 14:09.067 energy per energy packet that's affecting me there. 14:09.067 --> 14:15.555 It is both a wave and a kind of packet, depending on how you look at it. 14:17.329 --> 14:19.962 And that's the worst thing of all. 14:19.962 --> 14:27.078 I heard someone say during a lecture or presentation, “Yeah, that’s great,” or what do we see? 14:27.078 --> 14:36.389 Here we can see that the higher the frequency, the shallower the penetration depth. 14:36.389 --> 14:41.693 This is the penetration depth, and this is the frequency —both are logarithmic representations. 14:41.693 --> 14:47.581 Otherwise, you wouldn't see anything if it were linear, and we just need to remember: the higher 14:47.581 --> 14:51.720 the frequency, the shallower the penetration depth. 14:51.720 --> 14:56.473 This was said: “That’s good, then it won’t go in that far.” 14:56.473 --> 15:02.776 Among other things, I am also a certified radiation safety specialist because I worked 15:02.776 --> 15:06.411 with radioactive materials for many years. 15:06.411 --> 15:14.223 That's when I learned that the shallower the penetration, the worse it is. Why? 15:14.223 --> 15:22.860 The energy density—it doesn't matter whether it's radioactive ionizing radiation or non-ionizing radiation. 15:22.860 --> 15:30.722 The shallower the penetration depth, the more energy is deposited in a given volume. 15:30.722 --> 15:38.246 And I think that makes sense: the more energy is concentrated in a given volume, the greater the chance 15:38.246 --> 15:42.674 that it might cause problems and result in damage. 15:42.674 --> 15:53.403 People have actually been rather naive in saying, “Yes, ionizing radiation—of course that’s harmful—but the fact is”—and the 15:53.403 --> 16:05.256 next speakers will surely go into this in more detail—“that there are also problems with this non-ionizing radiation.” 16:05.256 --> 16:08.960 Well, this might just be the most important slide of all. 16:08.960 --> 16:14.170 A shallow penetration depth is not good—it's bad. 16:14.170 --> 16:21.360 So, on the left, we see a schematic diagram typical of 5G. 16:21.360 --> 16:33.576 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 16:33.576 --> 16:43.034 using a single antenna, a so-called antenna array—for example, an 8x8 array of transmitters—will 16:43.034 --> 16:48.089 generate a beam through electrical manipulation. 16:48.089 --> 16:54.697 But when you hear the word “beam,” you might think of a flashlight or a laser—but that’s not what it is. 16:54.697 --> 16:58.902 While preparing for this presentation, I had to learn it myself first. 16:58.902 --> 17:01.011 That's kind of how I had imagined it, too. 17:01.011 --> 17:14.303 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. 17:14.303 --> 17:23.631 This shows the intensity in the direction of a certain number of individual antennas that are coordinated to transmit 17:23.631 --> 17:32.447 together, and we're looking in the 0-degree direction—that's the main lobe; these things are also called lobes. 17:32.447 --> 17:40.387 It isn't as localized or as directional, but it's obviously much better for this application than if it 17:40.387 --> 17:44.516 were omnidirectional, as we saw with spherical waves. 17:44.516 --> 17:50.486 It's aimed specifically at the person who needs it and, to some extent, their surroundings, 17:50.486 --> 17:53.539 while the rest don't really notice it that much. 17:53.539 --> 17:58.650 That's certainly a positive thing, but the person standing in the radiation—and that's not just him, but 17:58.650 --> 18:03.560 perhaps also someone who happens to be standing next to him—will naturally be affected as well. 18:03.560 --> 18:12.624 But as I said before, the bigger danger is actually your own device, at least if you hold it like this . 18:12.624 --> 18:21.764 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. 18:21.764 --> 18:36.814 Okay, so 5G operates at 700 MHz, and it says here “up to 26 GHz,” so as far as I know, 5G only goes 18:36.814 --> 18:44.832 up to 8 GHz—just like Radio Yerevan: “It depends!” 18:44.832 --> 18:50.947 So, if I'm in a rural area, that's where I use the lower frequencies. 18:50.947 --> 19:02.941 Why? Because they're practically not absorbed by the air, so I don't need a base station for this area. 19:02.941 --> 19:10.815 If I want to work with a directed beam—that is, at the highest frequencies—then, based on a rough estimate, I’ll probably 19:10.815 --> 19:14.205 need 100 smaller base stations. That’s much more expensive. 19:14.205 --> 19:17.856 And then there's the middle section and the narrower section. 19:17.856 --> 19:25.333 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. 19:25.333 --> 19:33.480 And when we're in a larger city, 5G—which is very likely to be available there, whether today or sometime in the 19:33.480 --> 19:41.020 near future—will take a certain amount of time to be fully implemented from a technical standpoint. 19:41.020 --> 19:43.518 It does cost a little money, after all. 19:43.518 --> 19:56.185 Okay, so that's—let's say—I've just outlined the technical aspects and hinted a little at where problems might arise. 19:56.185 --> 20:03.254 Generally speaking, I feel that the so-called precautionary principle is missing. 20:03.254 --> 20:11.875 In the EU, it has actually been standard practice up until now to introduce a new technology only after 20:11.875 --> 20:19.940 conducting a thorough risk analysis and risk assessment to ensure that it is, in fact, safe. 20:19.940 --> 20:22.183 In the U.S., it's a little bit the other way around. 20:22.183 --> 20:30.300 First you just go ahead and do it, then you see if anything happens, and if it does, you put the brakes on. 20:32.252 --> 20:39.825 Our dear host Ronny also mentioned the COVID-19 vaccine earlier; in that case, the 20:39.825 --> 20:45.120 precautionary principle certainly did not apply. 20:45.120 --> 20:50.165 Even our former chancellor said, “We’re all guinea pigs.” 20:50.165 --> 20:57.756 But I'm sure not many of those sitting here have allowed themselves to be used as guinea pigs. 20:57.756 --> 21:06.083 And so, when it comes to mobile communications, I believe that, somewhere along the line, the 21:06.083 --> 21:10.759 precautionary principle has not been observed. 21:10.759 --> 21:14.212 And I was pretty much right on time with my 20 minutes. 21:14.212 --> 21:23.860 So, to recap: Radio waves—you can't see them, they travel through a vacuum, but at an incredibly high speed. 21:23.860 --> 21:28.149 And there's no doubt that mobile communications have useful applications—as Ronny has already pointed out. 21:28.149 --> 21:33.709 But, as I said, the precautionary principle does actually apply. 21:33.709 --> 21:41.314 The higher the frequency, the greater the energy input, and in densely built-up areas, 21:41.314 --> 21:45.179 there is or will be directional radiation. 21:45.179 --> 21:52.701 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 21:52.701 --> 21:57.538 standing in the beam is exposed to a bit more radiation. 21:57.538 --> 22:00.796 Yes, that's it. Thank you. 22:05.105 --> 22:13.578 Cell phone and Wi-Fi radiation harms people, animals, and the environment. We need radiation-free zones! asza.org