Evaluation of exposure levels generated by cellular systems: methodology and results

During the past years, the number of antenna installations has considerably increased mainly as a consequence of the great diffusion of cellular systems. While the emissions of mobile terminals principally concern cellular system users, the exposure due to base stations (BSs) is permanent and spread over the entire territory. In this paper, a flexible approach for the evaluation of exposure levels generated by cellular systems BSs is proposed. Both a conceptual method for the evaluation of the overall exposure level and a site specific method for the computation of the field in the surroundings of BS antennas are proposed. This last method is based on a combination of three different propagation models which enable an accurate evaluation of the field both close to the antenna and farther off. The validity of the approach is checked by comparison with measurements in single-antenna and multiantenna cases.