Experimental assessment of electromagnetic field exposure from 802.11ax devices

Although exposure from Wi-Fi devices is reported to be far below the established regulatory limits, there are still concerns of safe use of such equipment because of the continuous evolution of the protocols and of the widespread use of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). This paper describes an experimental analysis of Wi-Fi 6 transmissions and their respective electromagnetic field exposure levels during different conditions of operation (output power, frequency band, bandwidth) in the direction of maximum antenna gain of the devices under test while trying to achieve maximum traffic in the channel. The measurements were carried out in the controlled environment of an anechoic chamber. Apart from power density levels which were measured to be far below the reference levels, radiation patterns, spectrograms and time traces of the Wi-Fi signals were captured, and demodulation was performed. The results can provide valuable feedback on the exposure assessment of the sixth generation of Wi-Fi networks.