What is millimeter wave radiation?

Millimeter-wave technology uses non-ionizing radiation in the form of low-level radio waves to scan a person’s body.

Millimeter waves are electromagnetic (radio) waves typically defined to lie within the frequency range of 30–300 GHz . The microwave band is just below the millimeter-wave band and is typically defined to cover the 3–30-GHz range.

Millimeter waves penetrate into the human skin deep enough (delta = 0.65 mm at 42 GHz) to affect most skin structures located in the epidermis and dermis.

Millimeter waves propagate solely by line-of-sight paths. They are not reflected by the ionosphere nor do they travel along the Earth as ground waves as lower frequency radio waves do. At typical power densities they are blocked by building walls and suffer significant attenuation passing through foliage.

5G networks continue to roll out around the world. This next generation of wireless communication is being powered, in part, by a new technology known as millimeter wave (mmWave) .

Comparatively, the maximum carrier frequency of the 4G-LTE band, 2 GHz, provides an available spectrum bandwidth of only 100 MHz. Therefore, using millimeter wave frequencies can easily increase the spectrum bandwidth by a factor of 10, allowing for a massive increase in transmission speeds .