The relation between the specific absorption rate and electromagnetic field intensity for heterogeneous exposure conditions at mobile communications frequencies

The relation between the incident electromagnetic field strength and both the whole‐body and the local specific absorption rate (SAR) was investigated for typical heterogeneous exposure scenarios for frequencies relevant for mobile communication. The results were compared to results from plane wave exposure. Heterogeneous exposure arises from multiple path propagation of the electromagnetic waves to the location of interest. It is shown that plane wave exposure does not represent worst‐case exposure conditions. When the electric field strength arising at plane wave exposure is compared to the electric field strength averaged over the volume of the human body occurring during multipath exposure, 12% of all heterogeneous cases examined represent worse exposure conditions than plane wave exposure for whole‐body exposure at 946 MHz, 15% at 1840 MHz, and 22% at 2140 MHz. The deviation between plane wave and heterogeneous whole‐body SAR ranges from ?54% to 54%. For partial‐body SAR averaged over 10 g of tissue, a range from ?93% to 209% was found when comparing multiple wave exposure to single incoming plane waves. The investigations performed using the Visible Human as phantom showed that the basic restrictions are met as long as the reference levels are not exceeded. However, this must not be necessarily the case when different phantoms are used to perform similar investigations because recent studies demonstrated that reference levels might not be conservative when phantoms of children are used. Therefore, the results of this work indicate the need to extend the investigations to numerical simulations with additional human phantoms representing parts of the human population having different anatomy and morphology compared to the phantom used within the frame of this project. This also applies to phantoms of children. Bioelectromagnetics 30:651–662, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.