5G Airplane Interference Worries Were Largely Overhyped
from the the-sky-is-falling dept
Late last year, we noted how the FAA and the FCC (the agency that actually knows how spectrum works) had gotten into a bit of an ugly tussle over the FAA’s claim that 5G could harm air travel safety.
The FAA claimed that deploying 5G in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz “C-Band” would cause interference with certain radio altimeters. But the FCC conducted its own study showing minimal issues, and pointed to the more than 40 countries have deployed 5G in this bandwidth with no evidence of harm. Lifelong wireless spectrum policy experts like Harold Feld also blogged about how this was a an overheated controversy, and any real harm could be mitigated.
It didn’t much matter. It didn’t take long before the news wires were filled with reports about how 5G was going to be a diabolical public safety menace when it came to air travel. In part, thanks to folks at the FAA, who leaked scary stories to outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
A year later, and a new NTIA study has found that yeah, most of the potential harm 5G can cause to altimeters can be mitigated with some software updates and careful strategizing of tower placement around airports, just as the FCC and numerous other countries had already stated years earlier:
Researchers found that 5G transmissions stay safely within their assigned frequencies and mostly don’t point signals skyward where aircraft operate, according to the report released Tuesday, the first of several from the government on the new high-speed mobile phone service.
There is a “low level of unwanted 5G emissions” in frequencies used by so-called radar altimeters — which calculate a plane’s distance from the ground and are critical to landing in low visibility — the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said in the report.
The findings offer the the strongest indication to date that the patches being applied to some aircraft models should work well to protect them.
The fact that this always was a minor, fixable problem probably won’t get anywhere near the coverage you saw last year when countless news outlets proclaimed that airliners could soon start falling from the sky thanks to 5G. This was also a weird instance where the FAA failed to cooperatively heed the insights of the FCC, the one regulator specifically tasked with understanding how wireless spectrum actually works.
Filed Under: 5g, airelines, faa, fcc, hype, interference, safety
Comments on “5G Airplane Interference Worries Were Largely Overhyped”
Left hand, meet right hand!
One branch of government doesn’t understand what another branch does, misconstrues situation, leaks poison.
News at 11.
Missing the issue
Being a Electrical Engineer and also a pilot……
The FAA was right to be play it safe and TEST before just saying, “don’t worry about it, different freq band”
For example GPS is a very weak signal, and it doesn’t take much to block it.
“The GPS L1 signal is susceptible to second harmonics from transmitters operating in the 781-794 MHz range, 3rd harmonics in the 521-530 MHz range, and so on. In different countries these frequencies can be allocated for different uses, but in North America, the 781-794 MHz range refers to the upper portion of television channel 66, and the lower part of channel 67. Additionally, the 3rd harmonics of channel 23; the 10th harmonic of the marine very-high-frequency (VHF) communications channels; and the 12th and 13th harmonics of aviation communications frequencies, all fall in the GPS L1 band. That means that with enough power, GPS can be jammed by any of these.”
Now for the bad news, the harmonics do not have to be generated at the source. Any non-linear device will create harmonics.
A cell phone or Wifi device transmitting can make a nearby device that is just receiving at moment spit out harmonics that then can block things like GPS. It has happened with to aviation radios, or transmitting, the other not.
Re: Who's missing the point?
The article is not about whether interference exists, it’s about the overreaction and scare-story leaks from the FAA before the testing was even done.
Re: Re:
The aviation industry has an attitude to safety that is based on unless it is proven safe, it is to be treated as dangerous. They would rather have bad publicity over banning something than the bad publicity of an aircraft accident.
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So, why didn’t they test those frequences long ahead of time? Those radar altimeters are supposed to operate between 4.2 and 4.4 GHz. Apparently they didn’t have any space reserved below 4.2, and by the above logic it should’ve been considered dangerous for them to rely on that RF band being clear. But now they’re worried about signals at 3.98!?
Either they should’ve had the FCC reserve much more space—like 80 years ago—or should’ve tested right to the boundaries of their reservations.
Re: Re: Re:
This isn’t (primarily) about the FAA’s decisions in this, which are understandable if somewhat too cautious. The main issue here is the media coverage over the issue, which was definitely overblown. If the FAA was being cautious, the media was making into something superdramatic.
Re: RE: Missing the issue
You might have wanted to read the linked blog post by Herold Feld. It addresses exactly your concerns here. In that it tells readers, as Techdirt did at the time, that the FAA had a year before the C-band auction to start testing. And a year after the auction before the rollout. It did not start testing until after the rollout began, and had tested most altimeters in use within 6 months. They spent 2 years trying to prevent the use of the spectrum at all, and only started testing when they were forced to.
You miss the issue. The issue is not the testing. Everyone agrees the FAA should have tested. Its that the FAA refused to test. Refused to provide underlying data backing up studies FAA relied on in claiming it was too unsafe to ever use the spectrum. And took the time that could have gone to testing every radio altimeter and provided time for airlines to replace bad ones fighting the idea, manufacturing the standoff that occurred at the time of the deployment. That’s why we consider the worries ‘overhyped’. FAA was worrying about hypotheticals rather than real-world impacts.
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5G can oscilate oxygen and change the physics of air which can have devastating consequenses for lift of an aircraft. That is why FAA is requesting mandates for limits to 5G strength around airports.
the fundamental problem
This is what happens when you put people in charge of agencies that dont understand or dont respect the science.
they must have been drastically over-hyped considering the rest of the planet, apparently, is not only using it but have been for goodness knows how long! it’s typical USA bullshit and scaremongering, coupled with certain people and companies shitting themselves that they may lose a buck!!
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The frequencies used for 5G in the USA and the rest of the world are not identical making your comparison flawed.
USA: 3700-4200Mhz
Europe: 3400-3800Mhz
Radio Altimeters operate at 4200-4400Mhz
Now you see why one country might have an issue and the other country not so much.
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This comment is inaccurate. The US is using 3700-3980 MHz.
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A) The C-Band is 3.7-4.2GHz. The US is using 3700-3980MHz (3.7-3.98GHz) for 5g, because there is a 220Mhz safety band
B) Japan is using 3.6-4.1GHz. You’ll notice that is a smaller safety band than in the US.
One big reason the FAA went super conservative is they had just gotten a big political black eye over their failure to properly oversee Boeing’s 737MAX with MCAS. That failure caused two crashes and hundreds of deaths. The FAA got lucky in that the deaths were not on US territory. Any crashes due to 5G interference at US airports would be on US territory. Bureaucracies normally react to being caught not doing their jobs by slowing everything down and following every rule to the exact letter.
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That’s the thing: I can’t really fault the FAA here even though I disagree with them and thought they were being a bit too cautious. Even without the whole deal with the 737 Max, they ought to be more cautious than strictly necessary given the potential consequences of every decision involving safety. Given that, I’d prefer that, if they make a wrong decision, they should generally err on the side of caution first, then test to see how big of a problem it really is, if at all. The 737 Max just gave them even more incentive to be overly cautious than they otherwise would have.
Plus, unlike really any of the other concerns being raised regarding 5G that weren’t just, “5G is being too hyped up,” or something like that, it was reasonably plausible that 5G could interfere with airplanes’ instruments, and it was quite likely that something would need to be done to ensure safety, even if it was only a minor fix that was almost trivial to implement. It’s not like the “5G causes cancer”, which it almost certainly couldn’t be able to even theoretically given that adjacent spectra cannot do so, with only UV or other high-frequency EM radiation being capable of doing so like that, and the same goes for any form of radiation sickness. The idea of 5G causing COVID is patently absurd because the cause for that is already identified as coming from a virus well before it spread past China, and EM radiation cannot cause viruses, period. Same for most everything else. By contrast, radio interference like this is a real thing and has been known to cause problems with aircraft in the past (which is one reason why wireless communications like these are so heavily regulated in terms of which frequencies are available where, to whom, and for what purpose(s). It was also entirely plausible for it to occur with 5G, particularly at the higher-frequency end, as it starts to come close to the frequencies allotted for that particular use, and it’s not an incredibly short-range signal like Bluetooth (where the only issue is having it active on the plane, essentially).
The media coverage was the biggest problem here. They made the issue seem much more serious and dramatic than even the FAA themselves did, and that’s how most of the public is then going to view the issue. They are also highly unlikely to pay much, if any, attention to stuff like this that shows how easy it is to solve the potential problem.
in re: Press coverage that seemed to overhype the danger
Would it have really hurt the FAA to release an official statement early on, with wording to the effect of “No, we’re not bickering with the FCC, we’re merely negotiating a time table that will give the flying public the greatest margin of safety” or some similar word salad. I haven’t followed all of the articles published on this topic, but it seems to me that there was a lot of CYA going on here, probably more than I personally recognized. In fact, it sounded more like somebody wanted their name(s) in the public perception arena, perhaps to embark on a future in elected public service.
sumgai
I’d rather the FAA err on the side of caution, than having planes dropping out of the sky – all so that fools (who don’t even care about their own safety, much less anyone else’s) can watch YouTube and TikTok on a plane.
5G’s great until it causes a plane to crash, killing your bro who was minding his own business, sitting on his bed playing PS5
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I support FAA Testing. I shit on FAA refusing to test and simply claiming problems will occur and throwing up their hands, which is what they did for 2 years before a 6 month testing schedule cleared most altimeters.
It's Not Just the Altimeters, It's the Pilots
Radiofrequency radiation doesn’t just affect altimeters, it biologically affects pilot cognitive ability. See article from Professional Pilot Magazine:
https://www.propilotmag.com/5g/