• Sims@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    A laymans opinion on the challenge: Waves lose energy, and the exact placement of antennas will matter. I don’t know what the mechanism is called, but we don’t place wind turbines right next to each other. That is afaik because each turbine takes some of the energy out of a larger chunk of the wind-wave in an ‘bubble’ around it, so we place them with optimal distance according to efficiency of that mechanism. If I’m right the effect will probably be minimal. Anyway, just a stab at an interesting thought…

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 months ago

      Yep. It’s called near field and far field in radio. In the far field you can approximate it as a beam from the transmitter, while in near field it’s magnets and things can absolutely interact. You never want to put up a stand-alone antenna in the near field of something conductive. Those big tower antennas actually incorporate the ground as a critical part of their design, because of that and the non-negligible conductivity of ground water.