Influence of mobile phone traffic on base station exposure of the general public

Health Phys. 2010 Nov;99(5):631-8. doi: 10.1097/HP.0b013e3181db264f.

Abstract

The influence of mobile phone traffic on temporal radiofrequency exposure due to base stations during 7 d is compared for five different sites with Erlang data (representing average mobile phone traffic intensity during a period of time). The time periods of high exposure and high traffic during a day are compared and good agreement is obtained. The minimal required measurement periods to obtain accurate estimates for maximal and average long-period exposure (7 d) are determined. It is shown that these periods may be very long, indicating the necessity of new methodologies to estimate maximal and average exposure from short-period measurement data. Therefore, a new method to calculate the fields at a time instant from fields at another time instant using normalized Erlang values is proposed. This enables the estimation of maximal and average exposure during a week from short-period measurements using only Erlang data and avoids the necessity of long measurement times.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cell Phone / statistics & numerical data*
  • Environmental Exposure / statistics & numerical data*
  • Humans
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Public Health / statistics & numerical data*
  • Radio Waves
  • Research Design
  • Time Factors