In-vitro experiments to estimate the impact of EMI from cellular phone and base-station antennas on implantable cardiac pacemakers

This paper reviews the in-vitro experiments made to estimate the impact of the EMI from cellular phones on implantable cardiac pacemakers in Japan. The approach of the EMI test system is to directly expose the pacemaker to the near- and far-fields generated by a dipole antenna and/or an actual cellular phone. The results were used by the electric medical equipment study group of Japan to establish guidelines for the use of current Japanese cellular phones. An actual test system of cellular base-station EMI with a pacemaker is presented. To simulate a realistic EMI situation, a torso phantom with an installed pacemaker is newly constructed A multi-carrier generator is used as the base-station RF signal source. A typical commercial base-station antenna is used to generate microwave EMF similar to that emitted from cellular base-stations. The results show that EMI impact is determined by the maximum averaged power, not the peak power, of the base-station RF signal.