I think it could. While a small jammer near a cell tower might not be able to overpower the transmit signal of the cell tower, even if the jammer is only a few watts it could easily overpower the receive signal. Your cell phone is transmitting even fewer watts, and is much further away from the antenna. The signal from the cell phone falls off exponentially with distance, as it radiates out ominidirectionally. So the jammer wins by power and proximity to the receiving antenna.
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And when I create and release my combination locust/5G signal jammer… which spelling do I use?
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I never considered the tower’s receivers. You’re absolutely correct!
The police map shows a 0.25 mile radius circle centered around the intersection near where the jammer was found.
An antenna search of the area shows 30 towers and 158 antennas within a 3.0 mile radius.
http://www.antennasearch.com/HTML/search/search.php?address=37.136586%2C+-121.670683
The nearest traditional cell tower (not 5G) is a Sprint Nextel tower 0.8 miles away, well outside the circle.
http://www.antennasearch.com/HTML/individual/nonregTower.php?faa_study_number=00-AWP-2337-OE
I thought the police map reflected the area of existing complaints of signal loss, but you’re right, they should cast a wider net around the area.
Interesting that the police radios stopped working nearby. Their radios operate at 154 MHz, not one of the common jammer frequencies.
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An epic rant on the subject of cheap, readily available high-power lasers:
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Fucking hell, you’re in the fractional watts space with consumer equipment (and the stuff that does actual watts means loads of paperwork)…
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Nomenclature gets tricky with the cyborgs, but I’d say if they’re metal, conductive, and serving as resonators for electromagnetic radiation, they’re antennas, and if they’re made of chitin or other organic compounds and they recognize epitopes by sensing charges and polarity, they’re antennae.
Actually, I guess the nomenclature is pretty straightforward even on the cyborgs (though they do make a weird situation even weirder).
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A significant portion of 5G bands are in or around 2.4GHz band and 5GHz band.
Jammers aren’t usually meant to be perfectly selective, just putting out tons of power from say 2.1GHz to 2.6GHz would ruin tons of 5G bands as well as pretty much all wifi running on standards older than 802.11ac.
If you study signal processing you’d learn that it is in many cases just mathematically impossible to generate an arbitrarily narrowly focused signal on a given frequency. It always spills over into frequencies above and below to some extent. There’s been decades of work into developong filters to try and get those edges crisper and tighter, and the jamming equipment doesn’t use any of that shit, it’s job is to turn on the firehose and blast.
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While working Collection & Jamming in the USArmy I was tempted a few times to have a little fun in the FM band. It’s considered an act of war, so I restrained myself.
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It was my understanding that 5G uses millimeter-wave range, around 25 GHz and up, while most wi-fi uses 4-6GHz. Those are pretty far apart in the grand scheme of things.
Today I read that 5G sometimes shares some LTE bands below 6GHz in rural areas. The area in question isn’t what I’d call rural, but it’s also not “big city”-density. So who knows which bands are really at play? I also suppose it’s possible the reports may be confusing “cell phones” with 5G and data-over-cellular with “wifi”.
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That seems likely. My experience on helpdesk makes me think this is the likeliest thing.
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Other than the millimeter-wave, which has very little range is is only useful in extra-dense coverage situations like sports stadiums, city parks, and areas with large pedestrian traffic, 5G is basically warmed-over LTE. I’ve always felt it was one of the most over-hyped things in cell phones. Never mind that a few years ago, a spiffed-up version of 3G/HSPA was passed off as 4G in the US by both T-Mobile and AT&T.
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