Project ElectroSmart

Measuring and Modeling the Microwave Electromagnetic Field Exposition of the General Public using smartphones

About the Project

The Internet and new devices such as smartphones have fundamentally changed the way people communicate, but this technological revolution comes at the price of a higher exposition of the general population to microwave electromagnetic fields (EMF). This exposition is a concern for health agencies and epidemiologists who want to understand the impact of such an exposition on health, for the general public who wants a higher transparency on its exposition, but also for cellular operators and regulation authorities who want to improve the cellular coverage while limiting the exposition. Despite the fundamental importance to understand the exposition of the general public to EMF, it is poorly understood because of the difficulty to measure, model, and analyze this exposition. 

The goal of the ElectroSmart project is to develop the instrument, methods, and models to compute the exposition of the general public to microwave electromagnetic fields used by wireless protocols and infrastructures such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or cellular. Using a pluri-disciplinary approach combining crowd-based measurements, in-lab experiments, and modeling using sparse and noisy data, we address challenges such as designing and implementing a measuring instrument leveraging on crowd-based measurements from mobile devices such as smartphones, modeling the exposition of the general public to EMF to compute the most accurate estimation of the exposition, and analyzing the evolution of the exposition to EMF with time. This project will have scientific, technical, and societal applications, notably on public health politics by providing a better understand of the actual exposition of the population to EMF.

The Academy helps to push ElectroSmart to a broad visibility in order to reinforce the scientific contributions that are based on a large adoption.