5G Rollout and US Airports

The rollout of the 5G ‘C-band’ spectrum in the United States after a pushback led to several airlines temporarily canceling their flights to the U.S. over fears of spectrum interference with crucial aircraft navigation systems.

- 5G is the 5th generation mobile network. It is a new global wireless standard after 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. 5G enables a new kind of network that is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices.
- 5G wireless technology is meant to deliver higher multi-Gbps peak data speeds, ultra low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience to more users.

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The faster the service to be, the higher the frequency should be. As a result, in order to get the full benefits of 5G, operators must operate at higher frequencies.
Some of the auctioned C band (a radio frequency band between 3.7 and 4.2 GHz) spectrum was utilised for satellite radio, but the shift to 5G implies there will be significantly more traffic.
In 2021, the United States auctioned up mid-range 5G capacity in the C band to mobile phone providers
The new C band 5G service may render a substantial number of aeroplanes inoperable.
The FAA( Federal Aviation Administration) has cautioned that the operation of altimeters, which measure how far above the ground an aircraft is flying, may be impeded if they operate in the 4.2-4.4 GHz range, which is too near to the frequency of C range. The main worry is of ‘radio emissions’ at the top of the C-band’s 3.98 GHz frequency ‘bleeding over’ into the 4.2 GHz-4.4 GHz band used by civil aircraft radio altimeters.
Aside from altitude, altimeter readouts are employed to aid with automatic landings and to detect harmful currents known as wind shear.

Companies have claimed that C band 5G has been deployed in around 40 different nations without causing aircraft disturbance. They have agreed to set up buffer zones around airports in the United States to decrease the potential of interference.

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