ABSTRACT
The aim of this research was to quantify the levels of radiofrequency electromagnetic energy (RF-EME) in a residential home/apartment equipped with a range of wireless devices, often referred to as internet of things (IoT) devices or smart devices and subsequently develop a tool that could be useful for estimating the levels of RF-EME in a domestic environment. Over the course of 3 years measurements were performed in peoples' homes on a total of 43 devices across 16 device categories. Another 12 devices were measured in detail in a laboratory setup. In all a total of 55 individual devices across 23 device categories were measured. Based on this measurement data we developed predictive software that showed that even with a single device in 23 device categories operating near maximum they would, in total, produce exposures at a distance of 1 m of 0.17% of the ICNIRP (2020) public exposure limits. Measurements were also made in two separate smart apartments-one contained over 50 IoT devices and a second with over 100 IoT devices with the devices driven as hard as could reasonably be achieved. The respective 6-min average exposure level recorded were 0.0077% and 0.44% of the ICNIRP (2020) 30-min average public exposure limit.
ABSTRACT
This paper describes the assessment of the electromagnetic fields produced by consumer "smart" devices used to control and monitor everyday equipment and appliances in a modern "smart" home. The assessment is based on the careful measurement of fields produced by a range of such devices in a laboratory environment configured to operate in a condition simulating high user activity. All devices included in this study operate in the 2.4 GHz band utilizing either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity. Overall results indicate very low levels of electromagnetic fields for all IoT smart devices in terms of human exposure safety standards (typically much less than 1%) with very low duty cycles (also less than 1%) resulting in even lower time-averaged exposure levels. These low levels of exposure, along with rapid reduction of levels with distance from the devices, suggests that the cumulative effect of multiple devices in a "smart" home are not significant.
