Electro-Smog Monitoring Using Low-Cost Software-Defined Radio Dongles

With the increasing use of wireless communication technologies, it is important to monitor electromagnetic exposure (ideally with high temporal and spatial resolutions). In this paper, we explore the use of low-cost software-defined radio dongle for electro-smog measurements and more specifically for electro-magnetic fields power measurements and the estimation of the incident power density. We describe how the raw data is collected and then compute the average electromagnetic field power. We then compensate for the non-linearity of the amplifier and the antenna gain to get the corrected electromagnetic field power measurements. We use these measurements to estimate the incident power density which is the metric that we use to evaluate the electro-smog. The results show that the considered low-cost SDR dongle is stable and provides good quality power measurements. The estimation of the incident power density is shown to be accurate enough for monitoring the electro-smog. © 2013 IEEE.