Assessment of radio frequency fields in the 2.45 GHz band produced by smart home devices

Abstract

This paper describes the assessment of the electromagnetic fields produced by consumer “smart” devices used to control and monitor everyday equipment and appliances in a modern “smart” home. The assessment is based on the careful measurement of fields produced by a range of such devices in a laboratory environment configured to operate in a condition simulating high user activity. All devices included in this study operate in the 2.4 GHz band utilizing either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity. Overall results indicate very low levels of electromagnetic fields for all IoT smart devices in terms of human exposure safety standards (typically much less than 1%) with very low duty cycles (also less than 1%) resulting in even lower time-averaged exposure levels. These low levels of exposure, along with rapid reduction of levels with distance from the devices, suggests that the cumulative effect of multiple devices in a “smart” home are not significant.