Massive Measurements of 5G Exposure in a Town: Methodology and Results

Abstract

We target the problem of performing a large set of measurements over the territory to characterize the exposure from a 5G deployment. Since using a single Spectrum Analyzer (SA) is not practically feasible (due to the limited battery duration), in this work we adopt an integrated approach, based on the massive measurement of 5G metrics with a 5G smartphone, followed by a detailed analysis done with the SA and an ElectroMagnetic Field (EMF) meter in selected locations. Results, obtained over a real territory covered by 5G signal, reveal that 5G exposure is overall very limited for most of measurement locations, both in terms of field strength (up to 0.7 [V/m]) and as share w.r.t. other wireless technologies (typically lower than 15%). Moreover, our approach allows easily spotting measurement outliers, e.g., due to the exploitation of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) techniques between 4G and 5G. In addition, the exposure metrics collected with the smartphone are overall a good proxy of the total exposure measured over the whole 5G channel. Moreover, the sight conditions and the distance from 5G base station play a great role in determining the level of exposure. Finally, a maximum of 130 [W] of power radiated by a 5G base station is estimated in the scenario under consideration.

How Much Exposure From 5G Towers Is Radiated Over Children, Teenagers, Schools and Hospitals?

“…Interestingly, the contribution of 5G is lower than the pre-5G one for the early 5G adoption case. This outcome corresponds to the current situation, in which 5G represents a fraction of the exposure generated by pre-5G antennas (mainly 4G and 2G) [33]. Then, when passing from early to medium adoption level, the contribution of 5G exposure tends to increase -as a consequence of the radiated power growth by mid-band and mm-Wave antennas.…”

What is the Impact of 5G Towers on the Exposure over Children, Teenagers and Sensitive Buildings?

“…Interestingly, the contribution of 5G is lower than the pre-5G one for the early 5G adoption case. This outcome corresponds to the current situation, in which 5G represents a fraction of the exposure generated by pre-5G antennas (mainly 4G and 2G) [13]. Then, when passing from early to medium adoption level, the contribution of 5G exposure tends to increase -as a consequence of the radiated power growth by mid-band and mm-Wave antennas.…”

EMF Exposure in 5G Standalone mm-Wave Deployments: What Is the Impact of Downlink Traffic?

“…In addition, the authors estimate the maximum extrapolated field exposure in different 5G deployments (located in a set of countries) operating on frequencies lower than 6 GHz. Chiaraviglio et al [14] design and evaluate a new measurement methodology to measure exposure from 5G BSs in a commercial deployment. The authors exploit a set of measurement tools (including e.g., Spectrum ANalyzers (SANs), EMF meters and smartphones), which are used in cascade to collect exposure data.…”

“…A pause interval, stored in the variable cmd_sleep_rav, is then enforced (line 10), in order to allow the initial computation of the channel power. In the following, the algorithm measures the timestamp-plus-EMF samples (lines [12][13][14]. In more detail, the EMF is retrieved from the SAN through a channel power query (of electric field) (line 12), while the timestamp is instead obtained from an OS callback (line 13).…”