To take full advantage of upcoming 5G networks, antennas need to be much more advanced than they are today where even the best smartphones actually lose around 90 per cent of the signal.
One solution being developed by a Danish team from Aalborg University in collaboration with tech firms Intel and Wispry is to have the antennas directed towards the transmitter.
This works in a similar fashion to satellite communications where a dish pointing straight up at a satellite can pick up a signal that is 10,000 times weaker than that picked up by a mobile phone.
"If you know what direction the signal is coming from, you have a huge advantage," says Gert Frølund Pedersen who worked on the project.
Although it may be known where the nearest transmission tower is, the challenge with smartphones is that they rarely point in the same direction for long periods of time.
The project uses technology similar to radars that scans in all...