In his prime, Nikola Tesla , who dedicated his life to solving the mysteries of electricity and to the ideal way to make this phenomenon make people’s lives easier, became obsessed with the idea that electricity could transmitted wirelessly , over long distances, through the air, either by jumping through a system of suspended balloons or through strategically placed towers.
The truth is that things did not go according to plan, and Tesla’s ambitions never came to fruition.
However, recently, the publication of a research paper has suggested that the developers of the 5G network could have unknowingly built a “wireless power network” that might be able to adapt to charge or power small devices embedded in the devices. homes, cars, factories and workplaces.
Since 5G relies on a dense network of masts, and a powerful array of antennas, it is possible that this same infrastructure, with some minor adjustments, may be able to transmit power to small devices . However, this transmission would still have a drawback, which was already observed in the first Tesla towers: a high waste of energy , which could be difficult to justify if we take into account the current climate crisis and the urgency to solve it as soon as possible. .
Quite a few years ago, scientists discovered that a highly focused radio beam could transmit energy over relatively long distances without the use of a wire to carry the load. It is precisely this same technology that is currently used in the 5G network, since the Internet connection to our smart device is transmitted through radio waves, which are in turn transmitted from a local antenna.
Compared to the latest generation, 4G, this technology is intended to provide a 1,000-fold increase in capacity , thus allowing up to one million users to connect per square kilometer, without interference or signal loss.
And to achieve this, 5G uses very dense networks, with many masts, special antenna technologies, and millimeter wave (mmWave) transmission alongside more traditional bands. It is the transmission of these millimeter waves that allows to expand the bandwidth at the cost of shorter transmission distances, which operates at 30 GHz or more.
Thus, a large number of antennas allow the masts to form hundreds of pencil-shaped beams that are directed to particular devices, providing connectivity to the Internet.
And, according to experts, they would be the same elements necessary for the creation of a wireless electrical network. In fact, the increase in the density of the network is very important, since it opens the possibility of using millimeter wave bands for the transmission of different radio waves capable of transporting not only the Internet connection, but also the electrical energy.
Researchers experiment with the power of the 5G network
At the moment, scientists have carried out different experiments in which they have used new types of antennas in order to facilitate wireless charging. Thus, they were able to transmit 5G energy over a relatively short distance (just over 2 meters). But they hope that a future version may be capable of transmitting 6μW (6 millionths of a watt) at a distance of 180 meters.
However, for now at least, 5G wireless power is unlikely to be useful for, for example, charging our mobile phone fully wirelessly as the day progresses. But it could be useful when charging smaller devices, such as alarms or sensors.
