Validation of experimental whole-body SAR assessment method in a complex indoor environment

Experimentally assessing the whole-body specific absorption rate (SAR(wb) ) in a complex indoor environment is very challenging. An experimental method based on room electromagnetics theory (accounting only the line-of-sight as specular path) is validated using numerical simulations with the finite-difference time-domain method. Furthermore, the method accounts for diffuse multipath components (DMC) in the total absorption rate by considering the reverberation time of the investigated room, which describes all the losses in a complex indoor environment. The advantage of the proposed method is that it allows discarding the computational burden because it does not use any discretizations. Results show good agreement between measurement and computation at 2.8 GHz, as long as the plane wave assumption is valid, that is, at large distances from the transmitter. Relative deviations of 0.71% and 4% have been obtained for far-field scenarios, and 77.5% for the near field-scenario. The contribution of the DMC in the total absorption rate is also quantified here, which has never been investigated before. It is found that the DMC may represent an important part of the total absorption rate; its contribution may reach up to 90% for certain scenarios in an indoor environment.