Real-time distributed monitoring of electromagnetic pollution in urban environments

In the last two decades, the wide diffusion of mobile phones and wireless technologies has brought many advantages in professional activities as well as in everyday life. In general, mobile communication networks are constituted by a limited number of base stations. The spatial distribution of the field radiated from base stations turns out to be non-uniform with variations both in time and space that can exceed the normative limits of electromagnetic emissions. In order to real-time and in a long-term monitor the electromagnetic emissions, an innovative low cost solution based on a wireless sensor network (WSN) is presented in this paper. Such a network consists of spatially distributed and wirelessly connected autonomous devices (called nodes) that use suitable sensor to cooperatively collect physical quantities. The proposed solution considers the deployment of a set of WSN nodes, equipped with a broadband field probe, to monitor the level of the electromagnetic radiation in a distributed and real-time fashion.