A NUMERICAL SIMULATION SYSTEM FOR MOBILE TELEPHONY BASE STATION EMF EXPOSURE USING SMARTPHONES AS PROBES AND A GENETIC ALGORITHM TO IMPROVE ACCURACY

Abstract

With the increasing number of mobile phone users, new services, and mobile applications, the proliferation of radio antennas has raised concerns about human exposure to electromagnetic waves. This is now a challenging topic to many stakeholders such as local authorities, mobile phone operators, citizen, and consumer groups. Thus, the prediction of exposure map at urban scale is a very important requirement to find a relevant indicator of the real exposure. In this paper, we propose a monitoring solution for electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure based on a numerical modeling of the radio wave propagation radiated by mobile telephony base stations. The accuracy of this tool directly depends on the input data precision, such as location of base station antennas or their radiation pattern, which are often poorly known. These data are therefore refined by an optimization algorithm fed by a lot of information, such as the indication of the received signal strength (RSSI) measured directly from users’ smartphones, which are used as probes. Results show that this method significantly improves the precision of unknown data concerning mobile base stations and the accuracy of exposure maps at urban scale.