Human 6G Antennas? ‘One of the Worst Ideas Ever,’ Critic Says
Authors of a new study say human beings wearing special copper-coiled bracelets could be used as part of an electromagnetic radiation antenna system to power 6G. Critics say the technology could be harmful to your health.
Human beings could be used as part of an electromagnetic radiation (EMR) antenna system by wearing a special copper-coiled bracelet, according to a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.
The researchers said they developed a low-cost way to “harvest” the radiofrequency (RF) radiationthat gets “leaked” during visible light communication (VLC) — a technology they said is likely to be used in the “coming 6G networks.”
But some critics allege that using human beings as RF antennas for 6G is disrespectful to the human body and may have unknown health implications.
“I am diametrically opposed to this type of work, especially given the paucity of medical research on using the human body as an RF antenna,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., Children’s Health Defense(CHD) chief scientific officer and professor of biology at Simpson University.
“This type of technology makes the human body an RF collector and ignores the health implicationsof EMR altogether,” Hooker told The Defender.
‘LiFi’ can ‘enable new pervasive wireless systems’ for Internet of Things
The researchers — including Jie Xiong, Ph.D., an associate professor of information and computer sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Qing Wang, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Embedded Systems Group in the Department of Software Technology at TU Delft, The Netherlands — are proponents of VLC, or “LiFi” as it is sometimes called, which uses light to transmit data.
VLC works by turning LED lights on and off at a very high speed invisible to the human eye.
Like WiFi, VLC is wireless — but instead of using a router and RF waves to transmit data, VLC uses LED bulbs and light signals to send and receive information.
According to OpenVLC, a research platform co-founded by Wang, VCL can “enable new pervasive wireless systems in the context of the Internet of Things.”