Great social concern has risen about the potential health hazard of living near a cellular telephony base-station antenna, and certain technical questions have been posed on the appropriate way to measure exposure in its vicinity. In this paper, standard spherical near–near field transformation is proposed to obtain the electromagnetic field close to the antenna in free space conditions. The field obtained in this way allows to define an exclusion zone from the exposure compliance point of view, but also makes possible to bound the error committed by standard field measurement procedures. Furthermore, the visualization of the electromagnetic field in the proximity of the antenna in free space conditions, allows to define clearance templates that have to be met in the siting of the antenna in complex environments in order not to obstruct its main beam.

Peer Reviewed