Low-EMF future networks: The LEXNET EU project

In spite of the existing protection limits and despite the fact that no research results have proven any health effects below these limits, the public fears towards electromagnetic fields, mobile telephony and the radiofrequencies used, remain important. The EMF exposure from wireless communication systems and networks is often cited as a major cause of public concern and is frequently given considerable media coverage. This paper presents the rationale and objective of the EU project LEXNET that is to analyse future technologies and architectures able to minimize the Emf exposure. Since human exposure is not only induced by telephony base station but also from mobile phone, LEXNET project is defining a new metric to evaluate the exposure induced by a wireless network communication at a whole. This metric combines the exposure induced by base station antennas and the exposure induced by wireless devices. Both types of sources of exposure are taken into account to evaluate the average global exposure of the population in a specific geographical area. This paper explains the concept and gives the formulation of a new Exposure Index (EI).