31/08/2010
The Influence of the Reflective Environment on the Absorption of a Human Male Exposed to Representative Base Station Antennas from 300 MHz to 5 GHz
Günter Vermeeren, Marie-Christine Gosselin, Sven Kühn, Valpré Kellerman, Abdelhamid Hadjem, Azeddine Gati, Wout Joseph, Joe Wiart, Frans Meyer, Niels Kuster, and Luc Martens, in Physics in Medicine and Biology, Volume 55, Issue 18, pp. 5541–5555, September 2010, online August 31
The environment is an important parameter when evaluating the exposure to radio-frequency electromagnetic fields. This study numerically investigates the variation on the whole-body and peak spatially averaged-specific absorption rate (SAR) in the virtual family male placed in front of a base station antennas in reflective environments and in comparison to when the human model is placed in free space. The virtual family male has been placed at various distances in front of base stations operating at frequencies between 300MHz and 5GHz in three different reflective environments. The absorption was determined using the 3D EM FDTD solver Semcad-X. It has been observed that the ratio of the SAR in the virtual family male in a reflective environment and the SAR in the virtual family male in the free-space environment ranged from −8.7 dB up to 8.0 dB. ICNIRP reference levels are not always conservative with respect to the basic restrictions in a reflective environment.