Measurement and validation of GHz-band whole-body average SAR in a human volunteer using reverberation chamber

The World Health Organization's (WHO) recommendation on the need for further research for radio-frequency dosimetry has promoted studies on the whole-body average-specific absorption rate (WBA-SAR) in various kinds of anatomical-based numerical models. For experimental validation of GHz-band WBA-SARs in a real human, however, there have not so far been any published papers, despite the fact that, in 1982, Hill measured WBA-SARs at frequencies less than 40 MHz in human volunteers using a TEM-cell exposure system. In this study, we provide a measurement technique with a reverberation chamber for validating numerical dosimetry results on GHz-band WBA-SARs in living humans. We measured WBA-SARs at 1, 1.5 and 2 GHz for a 22 year old male volunteer, with a height of 173 cm and a weight of 73 kg, in the reverberation chamber, and compared the results with the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation. The reverberation chamber was excited by using a signal generator through an amplifier with an output power of 30-40 mW, which produced inside the chamber with the volunteer an average electric field strength of 5 V m(-1) equivalent to an average power spectral density of 6.6 mu W cm(-2). The WBA-SARs were obtained from the measured S-11 and S-21 together with the power density. On the other hand, the WBA-SARs have been calculated using the FDTD method for an adult male model with almost the same physique as that of the volunteer exposed to the electromagnetic field in the reverberation chamber. From the comparison between the measured and the calculated WBA-SARs, we could confirm that the measured GHz-band WBA-SARs approximately agree with the FDTD calculated results.