A WSN-based system for real-time electromagnetic monitoring

Nowadays, the wide expansion of smartphones and web-based wireless devices has brought to an increased demand of wireless infrastructures providing higher data bandwidth and better coverage. In this framework, the need of measurement systems aiming at verifying the compliance of the exposure levels to the generated electromagnetic (EM) fields with the safety limits imposed by the authorities came out. This work presents a low-cost solution for the pervasive and real-time electromagnetic monitoring based on a wireless sensor network (WSN) infrastructure. The proposed system implements a distributed strategy that manages both the electromagnetic field measurements acquired by means of the ad-hoc broadband field probes and the propagation of the information throughout the multihop links of the sensor network. The field probe has been designed to be completely passive and easily integrated within a small and low-power device deployed both in indoor and outdoor scenarios. The real-time capabilities as well as the potentialities of the proposed system have been experimentally validated both in controlled and real environments.