How 5G is Fast Tracking the Use of Pultruded Composites in Urban Infrastructure

April 14, 2020 ~

In our culture of bigger, better, faster, instant connectivity is the holy grail of network speeds, and it’s being brought to you by 5G, the next generation of wireless. It’s already available in major urban cities across the U.S. by the major wireless carriers.

So, what’s so good about 5G? Its faster internet connections offer speeds that are ten times faster than what most of us are experiencing today from our wireless carriers. And according to the European Pultrusion Technology Association (EPTA, Frankfurt, Germany), 5G mobile network services are expected to be widely available by 2025 in growing urban areas—a rollout that’s about to drive major adoption of pultruded composite materials in urban infrastructure.

The Need for Speed…and Pultruded Composites

Everyone is eager to surf a faster internet creating new demand for composites by a construction industry that’s already ripe for growth. In order to accommodate 5G cells into the world’s cities infrastructure, architects and urban planners will need innovative materials to deliver reliable in-building 5G services.

By using pultruded composites, 5G, which is made of a network of small 5G cells, is able to transmit through the materials wits lower 5G signal loss than traditional construction materials.

Transparency is Key

Pultruded glass fiber composite profiles are often used in telecommunications because they’re almost invisible to RF waves, making them an ideal solution for many types of radio, radar, and antenna applications. Their transparency to radiofrequency characteristics has become an emerging factor in favor of composites’ adoption in urban infrastructure.

Dr. Elmar Witten, secretary of EPTA, has said, “Composite materials offer many properties that make them attractive construction materials for future cities, including high strength and stiffness, low weight, corrosion resistance, thermal insulation, and design freedom. The need to ensure reliable 5G coverage in buildings and outside brings additional motivation for the integration of RF-transparent pultruded composites into urban design.”

Construction Extrudes the Benefits of Pultrusion

The construction industry is no stranger to using composite materials from Composites One to make pultruded parts. Pultrusion offers a cost-effective way to manage high volume production runs of constant cross-section parts. Standard shape applications in infrastructure include I-beams, channels, angles, beams, rods, bars, tubing, and sheets.

Composites One enables our customers to streamline the pultrusion processes by helping you select the right composite products for the job. Our dedicated technical support team includes pultrusion experts that educate manufacturers about new processes, technologies, and applications that can set up a customized pultrusion process to meet your specific needs.

Contact our team of pultrusion experts to learn how we streamline the pultrusion process.