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This article is the first thorough study of average population exposure to third generation network (3G)-induced electromagnetic fields (EMFs), from both uplink and downlink radio emissions in different countries, geographical areas, and for different wireless device usages. Indeed, previous publications in the framework of exposure to EMFs generally focused on individual exposure coming from either personal devices or base stations. Results, derived from device usage statistics collected in France and Serbia, show a strong heterogeneity of exposure, both in time, that is, the traffic distribution over 24 h was found highly variable, and space, that is, the exposure to 3G networks in France was found to be roughly two times higher than in Serbia. Such heterogeneity is further explained based on real data and network architecture. Among those results, authors show that, contrary to popular belief, exposure to 3G EMFs is dominated by uplink radio emissions, resulting from voice and data traffic, and average population EMF exposure differs from one geographical area to another, as well as from one country to another, due to the different cellular network architectures and variability of mobile usage. Bioelectromagnetics. 37:382-390, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The long-term variability of electric field strength, obtained by band selective measurements for GSM 900MHz, DCS 1800MHz and UMTS 2100MHz downlink band in realistic mobile network environment, is considered in this paper. Intensive measurements were carried out for 7 days at each of 7 different locations in an urban area of Belgrade. The measurement results show that each day can be divided into two distinctive periods: one with higher levels of electric field (9h-23h) and one with lower ones (23h-9h). Regarding the days of the week, the results show that the weekend days are slightly different from the working days. Having in mind the need for determination of values averaged over the defined time period, additional uncertainty stemming from telecommunication traffic and transmitter functionalities must be taken into account. Mentioned uncertainty was determined for different time intervals of averaging: 10s, 30s, 1min, 6min, 15min, 30min, 1h, 3h, 5h, 10h, 14h and 24h. Results show that the uncertainty falls within a range of 4.04-12.11% (GSM), 2.71-7.92% (DCS) and 4.69-14.69% (UMTS), for 6 different categories defined with regard to the days of the week and the specific day periods.

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