Theoretical evaluation of electromagnetic emissions from GSM900 mobile telephony base stations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip-Palestine

Theoretical assessments of power density in far-field conditions were used to evaluate the levels of environmental electromagnetic frequencies from selected GSM900 macrocell base stations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Assessments were based on calculating the power densities using commercially available software (RF-Map from Telstra Research Laboratories-Australia). Calculations were carried out for single base stations with multi-antenna systems and also for multiple base stations with multi-antenna systems at 1.7 m above the ground level. More than 100 power density levels were calculated at different locations around the investigated base stations. These locations include areas accessible to the general public (schools, parks, residential areas, streets and areas around kindergartens). The maximum calculated electromagnetic emission level resulted from a single site was 0.413 μW cm^-2 and found at Hizma town near Jerusalem. Average maximum power density from all single sites was 0.16 μW cm^-2. The results of all calculated power density levels in 100 locations distributed over the West Bank and Gaza were nearly normally distributed with a peak value of ∼0.01% of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection's limit recommended for general public. Comparison between calculated and experimentally measured value of maximum power density from a base station showed that calculations overestimate the actual measured power density by ∼27%. (authors)