Thermal effects of mobile phones on human auricle region

Publication date: Available online 14 November 2018Source: Journal of Thermal BiologyAuthor(s): Joanna Bauer, Charlie O’Mahony, Drahomir Chovan, John Mulcahy, Christophe Silien, Syed A.M. TofailAbstractMobile phones have become an indispensable utility to modern society, with international use increasing dramatically each year. The GSM signal operates at 900 MHz, 1800MHz and 2250 MHz, may potentially cause harm to human tissue. Yet there is no in silico model to aid design these devices to protect from causing potential thermal effect. Here we present a model of sources of heating in a mobile phone device with experimental verification during the phone call. We have developed this mobile phone thermal model using first principles on COMSOL® Multiphysics modelling platform to simulate heating effect in human auricle region due to mobile phone use. In particular, our model considered both radiative and non-radiative heating from components such as the lithium ion battery, CPU circuitry and the antenna. The model showed the distribution and effect of the heating effect due to mobile phone use and considered impact of battery discharge rate, battery capacity, battery cathode material, biological tissue distance, antenna radio-wave frequency and intensity. Furthermore, the lithium ion battery heating was validated during experiments using temperature sensors with an excellent agreement between simulated and experimental data (<1% variation). Mobile phone heating d...

Source: Journal of Thermal Biology - November 16, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research