Simulation of SAR for vehicle occupants

Vehicle and radio-communications equipment manufacturers, as well as those with responsibility for deploying specialist communications systems for vehicle applications, have a duty of care to ensure that the vehicle occupants are not exposed to high field levels from on-board transmitters. Numerical simulation is well suited to the analysis of in-vehicle field exposure issues, offering numerous advantages over experimental methods of evaluation. The paper outlines the development of such a model, and provides illustrative results obtained for both an empty vehicle model excited by a vehicle-mounted antenna (electric field only), and the same model augmented with a numerical model of the driver (electric field and SAR).