Human Exposure Assessment to Wearable Antennas: Effect of Position and Interindividual Anatomical Variability

Silvia Gallucci; Marta Bonato; Emma Chiaramello; Serena Fiocchi; Gabriella Tognola; Marta Parazzini

doi:10.3390/ijerph19105877

Human Exposure Assessment to Wearable Antennas: Effect of Position and Interindividual Anatomical Variability

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 12;19(10):5877. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19105877.

Authors

Silvia Gallucci^{1

2}, Marta Bonato¹, Emma Chiaramello¹, Serena Fiocchi¹, Gabriella Tognola¹, Marta Parazzini¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Electronics, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering (IEIIT), National Research Council (CNR), 20133 Milano, Italy.
² Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB), Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy.

Abstract

(1) Background: This work aims to assess the human exposure to the RF-EMFs emitted by a wearable antenna. (2) Methods: a wearable antenna tuned at f = 2.45 GHz was tested by placing it in six realistic configurations relative to a male and female human model. The exposure assessment was performed by means of computational methods to estimate the SAR_10g distributions at 1W of input power. (3) Results: (i) for all the configurations the SAR_10g distributions resulted always mainly concentrated on a superficial area immediately below the antenna itself; (ii) the obtained values have shown that the configuration with the highest exposure value was when the antenna was posed on the arm; (iii) the exposure tends to be higher for male model. (4) Discussion and Conclusions: This work highlights the importance of performing an exposure assessment when the antenna is placed on the human wearer considering the growth of the wearable technology and its wide variety of fields of application, e.g., medical and military.

Keywords: EM fields; human exposure; wearable device.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Electromagnetic Fields*
Female
Humans
Male
Wearable Electronic Devices*

Grants and funding

This work is performed in the framework of the European Defence Agency (EDA) project Nº. B 0987 IAP2 GP “Biological Effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields (RFBIO)” funded by the Italian MoD.