Age Dependence of Human Exposure in Emerging 5G Bands: Comparison between Plane-Wave Exposure and Multi-Beam Antennas

The fast development of the 5
^th
generation (5G) mobile networks and human-centered communications is leading to the increasing proliferation of wireless devices resulting in ubiquitous exposure of people of all ages. This study investigates the effect of ageing on the power deposition at 26 GHz and 60 GHz, frequencies upcoming for 5/6G. The exposure under near-field conditions induced by multibeam radiating structures is compared to the one induced by a plane wave. The highest variation of the averaged absorbed power density with respect to the typical value for adults is observed at 70 years and corresponds to 8.8% at 26 GHz and 6.9% at 60 GHz. The maximum decrease is obtained for children at 5 years and is of -4.5% at 26 GHz and -3.7% at 60 GHz. At 26 GHz, the plane-wave model results in an underestimation of the averaged power density variations obtained with a multi-beam antenna, while at 60 GHz the variations with the two sources of exposures are almost identical.