EMF Levels in 5G New Radio Environment in Seoul, Korea

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 9; pp. 19716 - 19722
• Main Authors: Lee, Ae-Kyoung, Jeon, Sang-Bong, Choi, Hyung-Do
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: 5G mobile communication; 5G NR; Amplitude modulation; base station; Base stations; Electromagnetic fields; EMF exposure; Gain; Histograms; mobile phone; Power measurement; Reference signals; Residential areas; Seoul; Stations; Synchronism; Synchronization; Time measurement; South Korea; Seoul South Korea
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3054363

This paper reports the electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure levels from fifth generation (5G) services. Three mobile operators in South Korea launched the world's first 5G New Radio networks using the 3.5 GHz band in April 2019. The transmitted power of the uplink slots and the synchronization signal reference signal received power (SS-RSRP) from user equipment (UE) were measured in Seoul. The power samples, averaged over a 1-s duration, were obtained for a traffic period of approximately 270 h from October 2019 to early February 2020 using the file transfer protocol while driving along the side streets in residential areas of Seoul. The measurement results show that the time-average level when exposed to a beam sweep of the base stations was less than <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">5~\mu \text{W} / \text{m}^{2} </tex-math></inline-formula>. However, the UE transmitted power level approached the maximum for a considerable period of the total measurement time owing to the extremely low SS-RSRP level of the base stations.