Specific absorption rate assessment of fifth generation mobile phones with specific anthropomorphic mannequin model and high‐resolution anatomical head model

Abstract

With the spread and application of the fifth generation (5G) of mobile communication technology, the number of 5G mobile phone users increase rapidly. The traditional safety standard of electromagnetic radiation of mobile phones was set two decades ago, in which a homogeneous specific anthropomorphic mannequin (SAM) head model with standardized size and shape is utilized for specific absorption rate (SAR) evaluation. The SAM model has been proved conservative for SAR evaluation of 2G, 3G and 4G mobile phone antennas. However, it needs to be validated whether it is still suitable for SAR evaluation of 5G mobile phone antennas. A high-resolution anatomical head model with tissues including muscle, skull, cerebrospinal fluid and brain is developed in this paper. The SAR values of three different generation mobile phone antennas are simulated by utilizing both the SAM model and the high-resolution anatomical head model to assess their applicability. Numerical simulations show that the anatomical model may produce a higher SAR value than the SAM model for a 5G mobile phone antenna. So new head model may need to be developed for the SAR evaluation of 5G mobile phone antennas.