Towards EMF exposure assessment over real cellular networks: An experimental study based on complementary tools

In this paper we present the approach that is going to be fostered within the framework of the Low EMF Exposure Future Networks (LEXNET) project to assess the exposure to electromagnetic fields in a city-scale area. The novelty lies on the fact that low-complexity dosimeters will be massively deployed (exploiting the possibilities brought about by an IoT platform) and their measurements will be afterwards processed to assess the corresponding exposure. LEXNET aims at filling the gap between two different ways of dealing with exposure to electromagnetic fields by proposing a new exposure metric, the so-called Exposure Index (EI). The EI comprises the exposure induced by both personal devices (uplink) and base stations (downlink). The deployment of low-complexity dosimeters will provide information about the far-field (downlink) exposure. In this paper we assess the feasibility of the proposed methodology, by comparing the values provided by the low-complexity dosimeters with those offered by more capable devices; furthermore, we also discuss how some additional measurement methodologies can be exploited so as to complement the proposed scheme.