The traditional approach of radio frequency electromagnetic field exposure compliance assessment is highly conservative when applied to radio base station antennas implementing dynamic beamforming. In this paper, an analytical model based on the queuing theory with a hyper-exponential service distribution time is developed to assess the time-averaged actual maximum downlink exposure of 5G multi-column radio base station antennas by taking into account the effects of beam scanning over time in free space. Using the measured antenna radiation patterns, the 5G downlink antenna precoding codebook, and assuming a conservative user equipment distribution, the ratio of the actual maximum exposure to the theoretical maximum exposure with 100% traffic load and 75% time-division duplex downlink duty cycle is found to be less than 0.5 and 0.3 for four-transmitter and eight-transmitter radio base station antennas, respectively. These results show that assuming constant peak power transmission in a fixed direction leads to an overestimate of downlink exposure also from conventional antennas characterized by only a few transmitters in addition to massive multi-input multi-output products.

As the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication is utilizing millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands, electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure emitted from a 5G mmWave mobile handset should be evaluated and compliant with the relevant EMF exposure limits in terms of peak spatial-average incident power density. In this work, a fast power density (PD) assessment method for a 5G mmWave mobile handset using the equivalent currents (EQC) method is proposed. The EQC method utilizes the intermediate-field (IF) data collected by a spherical measurement system to reconstruct the EQCs over a reconstruction surface, and then computes the PD in close proximity of the mobile handset with acceptable accuracy. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using a mmWave mobile handset mock-up equipped with four quasi-Yagi antennas. The assessed PD results are compared with those computed using full-wave simulations and also those measured with a planar near-field (NF) scanning system. In addition, three influencing factors related to the accuracy of the EQC method, namely, the angular resolution, the phase error, and the handset position in the IF measurements, are also analyzed. The proposed method is a good candidate for fast PD assessment of EMF exposure compliance testing in the mmWave frequency range.