Evaluation of Coverage and Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure in Complex Scenarios: Critical Issues and Possible Solutions

The incoming of 5G brought along new technical challenges regarding key issues as spectrum usage optimisation, energy efficiency, coverage, and exposure levels. From this point of view some scenarios are more critical than others. “Mission critical” ecosystems such as railway stations, airports, ports present intrinsic problematic issues from the point of view of the radio signals propagation due to their specific characteristics. It therefore becomes difficult to carry out electromagnetic impact and coverage measurements. This work is focused on the railway station ecosystem which has been studied through in-situ E-field (and power density) level measurements and numerical simulations aimed at a complete characterization. If from an EMF exposure point of view the scenario does not pose problems, from a coverage point of view there are specific propagation situations that can cause the radio signal to not cover some areas. The performed analysis makes it possible to identify the coverage related critical areas and to define scalable solutions that allow, through the deployment of low power small cell non-public networks, to obtain the necessary coverage minimizing the electromagnetic, economic, and energetic impact.