Virtual reality for training on measuring human exposure to electromagnetic fields around cellular base stations

Abstract

Assessing of human exposure to electromagnetic field is one of the tasks of a telecommunication engineer. This activity has significant social interest, as the measured levels must comply with health safety limits. It is also an appealing area for students as it integrates concepts related to radiofrequency, antennas, and propagation, both theoretically and practically. We offer our students practical activities for measuring field levels, using test and measurement equipment. Additionally, we have developed a virtual reality tool to enhance our students' skills in this area, which is presented in this paper. We compare the learning outcomes of two separate groups of students to validate the performance of this new tool. The first group attended a lesson with theoretical content and then performed outdoor measurements. The second group had the added virtual reality experience before using the test equipment. Quantitative results show an improvement in the assimilation of the concepts, and qualitative feedback from the users confirms the effectiveness of this approach.