US-Egypt Cooperative Research: Health Hazards due to Radiation from Mobile Base Stations

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Rapid growth of wireless communications and applications has necessitated the construction and ongoing maintenance of a large number of mobile base stations. These stations emit a radiation pattern that varies spatially and can pose a serious health hazard to the human body through radiation absorption. Global standard safety limits, which are determined by specific absorption rates, are set to regulate the interaction of antenna radiation with the human body. RF/microwaves emitted from the base stations are several orders of magnitude greater than handheld devices and pose potential health risks to people who live near these stations and those who install and maintain these stations can potentially be at risk. The main objective of this proposal is to develop a user friendly software simulation environment that will accurately and quickly calculate the health effects of base station radiation. Rather than using human subjects and measuring the radiation directly, the proposed work will employ a simulation package that will quickly and efficiently simulate the radiation field from a mobile base station and use that information to calculate specific absorption rates for a human body. To achieve these goals, the PI will collaborate with Dr. Hala Abdel Monem Elsadek and Dr. Hesham Ezzat Salem Eldeeb from the Electronics Research Institute, Giza, Egypt. Prior collaboration between these researchers yielded a simulation package and a parallel processing scheme that will enable the complex calculations and modeling to simulate the health effects and by hosting this environment of the institute's websites the project will enable other researchers to use and collect simulated radiation effects data. .Intellectual Merit. The biological effects of electromagnetic radiations present an important and challenging problem from technical, social, economical and legal points of view. This work employs an innovative approach to use numerical techniques to simulate the radiation field emitted from a base station and to calculate the radiation absorption rates without using human subjects. Coupling a simulation package with parallel processing schemes will allow these calculations to be made accurately and quickly.Broader Impacts. The proposed work builds on several years of discussions and research between US and Egyptian scientists on the development of numerical modeling techniques and parallel computing schemes. This project will provide the opportunity to further this collaboration and to develop new applications for these techniques and scheme that may be effective in improving safety of mobile base stations and reduce the risk to human health. For US junior scientists and students, this project will provide opportunities for scientific and cultural exchange. Early career Egyptian scientists and students will be trained at the University of California-Irvine with support from the Egyptian side.The project is funded under the US-Egypt Joint Fund Program, which provides grants to scientists and engineers in both countries to undertake cooperative research.