5G Threat to NOAA Weather Monitoring Seen as Overblown

Worries 5G will harm NOAA weather forecasting have "little to no factual foundation" and seem based on a problematic Commerce Department propagation analysis, High Tech Forum founder Richard Bennett blogged Wednesday. He said NOAA, doing simulations of radiation produced by 5G at frequencies near where its satellite-based advanced technology microwave sounder would measure water vapor in the air ignores propagation characteristics of 5G. He said industry should devote resources to working with NOAA on creating meaningful interference models. “The huge guard band would normally be more than enough to protect neighboring bands -- after all, we separate most allocations by 2.5-10 MHz,” Bennett said. “There are already thousands of microwave allocations immediately below the NOAA band, with no separation at all. 5G will work in much the same way as today’s microwave data systems, so there’s no obvious reasons why it would interfere when incumbent systems don’t.” Commerce didn't comment Thursday.