Investigating the Effect of Construction Type of BTS Antennas and the Type of Buildings around Them on the Microwave Radiation- A Case Study in Maragheh City

Due to technology improvement particularly telecommunication technology, the use of mobile phones has increased in recent years. Service providers have increasingly installed more BTS antennas inside the cities and villages to meet the growing demand. However, there is a concern about the level of exposure to microwave waves from these antennas. It is due to this concern that the current study seeks to investigate the horizontal pattern of microwave radiation from BTS antennas considering the type of antennas and surrounding buildings in Maragheh city, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran. The required information was collected through the interview with the city telecommunications organization company and field observations. Then, measurements were performed based on the IEEE STD C95.1 standard method via SPECTRAN 4060 handheld RF spectrum analyzer device. KolmogorovSmirnov and MannWhitney tests were adopted to analyze data using SPSS software. The results of the study showed that the BTS antenna installation and the amount of wave propagation on surrounding buildings vary from service provider to service provider. It is recommended to pay more attention prior to installation process specifically in highly populated areas. However, all the measurements were within the acceptable range of the ICNIRP allowable limits.