Dear all,
Thanks to those of you who responded to my question on cell phone
antenna towers. Here is the summary:
1) T-Mobile put a tower directly on our building.... Directly above our
NMR labs (~4 stories above). We have seen no adverse effects on any of
our instruments from the existence of these towers (300, 400, 3x500, and
600MHz instruments are in the building).
2) Please don't take this as a definitive answer, but my suspicion is
that you won't have any issues with the new cell towers. I've noticed no
effect whatsoever with using Verizon cell phones around any of our
magnets (800 MHz down to 300 MHz), nor do they seem to affect the 900
MHz instrument at a different site. Since you mentioned it's not even
the same building, I'd expect you to be fine.
3) AFAIK, the cellular systems use much higher frequencies than NMR, and
so should not interfere. They use spread spectrum technology, so their
signal would look like the broadband noise floor to an NMR. If
anything, I would guess that the NMRs could interfere with the cellular
service. Also, there is an RF shadow under the cellular towers where
there is no signal. If there is any interference, you should be able to
eliminate it with a filter or diode isolator.
4) I have cell antennas attached to my building, three floors up from
me. Some of the cabling goes directly behind the NMR lab. We've never
noticed any effect from them. (Our systems are 300, 400, and 500 MHz.)
My original question:
Dear all,
Our university is letting Verizon to install new cell phone antenna
towers on top of several buildings around campus. One is going to be on
the building adjacent to ours where all the NMR spectrometers are. I
don't know if this is going to affect the performance of NMR. Anyone
knows?
Thanks!
Wei
Wei Wycoff
NMR Facility Coordinator
125 Chemistry Building
601 S. College Ave.
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO 65211
Phone: (573) 882-3291
Fax: (573) 882-2754
Email: WycoffW_at_missouri.edu
Received on Mon Sep 18 2006 - 19:51:24 MST