Apr 20, 2017
Sven Kühn cited in article about in-ground base station antennas by the Swiss newspaper “Tagesanzeiger”
Sven Kühn, leader of the Hardware R&D group at Zurich43, and his team at the IT’IS Foundation have recently evaluated a prototype of the novel Kathrein In-Ground base station antenna developed by Swisscom AG. In contrast to the usual mounting on roofs, street poles or faces of buildings, these new antennas are integrated into the ground on highly frequented streets and public places. Due to the closer proximity to the users’ locations, better coverage and higher data rates can be achieved with less output power. Interestingly, the antennas have the look of manhole covers and are not easily recognizable on first sight.
The specific absorption rate (SAR) evaluation at IT’IS was performed in accordance with the requirements for compliance testing as defined in IEC 62209 [1] on a DASY5 V52 NEO dosimetric scanner from Schmid & Partner Engineering AG (SPEAG, Zurich). Calibration of the equipment and the procedures employed were in accordance with all requirements of the above-mentioned standard. In addition, computer simulations were performed to determine conservative exposure situations using the models of the Virtual Population (ViP).
Results showed that maximum exposure is always compliant with current safety guidelines for public exposure, even for extreme exposure situations (e.g., when sitting on top of the antenna).
[1] Ed.1 Part 2 “Human exposure to radio frequency fields from hand-held and body-mounted wireless communication devices – Human models, instrumentation, and procedures - Part 2: Procedure to determine the specific absorption rate (SAR) for wireless communication devices used in close proximity to the human body (frequency range of 30MHz to 6GHz)” Edition 1.0 2010-03
