A new in vitro exposure device for the mobile frequency of 900 MHz

Abstract

A wire patch cell has been designed for exposing cell cultures during in vitro experiments studying possible effects of mobile radio telephone. It is based on the wire patch antenna which works at 900 MHz with a highly homogeneous field inside the antenna cavity. The designed cell structure is symmetric and provides a rather homogeneous field distribution in a large area around its centre. Moreover, the exposure cell can irradiate equally up to eight 35 mm Petri dishes at the same time, which enhances the statistical biological studies. To improve the specific absorption rate (SAR) homogeneity inside each sample, each dish is placed into another 50 mm dish. This way, SAR inhomogeneity is always proper for biological studies (below 30%). The main advantage of this new device is that it can provide SAR levels 20 times higher than those induced by classical Crawford transverse electromagnetic (TEM) cell. Moreover, this small open device is easy to construct and fits into an incubator. However, to be used for in vitro, the wire patch cell is a radiating element with the same radiating pattern as a dipole, and thus some absorbing materials are necessary around the system when used for in vitro experiments. Secondly, because of its narrow bandwidth, it is difficult to maintain its working frequency. To overcome this problem, a matching device is integrated into the test cell. In this paper, we present a detailed explanation of the cell behavior and dosimetric assessments for eight 35 mm Petri dishes exposed. Simulations using the Finite Difference Time Domain technique and experimental investigations have been carried out to design the cell at 900 MHz. The numerical dosimetry was validated by dosimetric measurements. These investigations estimated the dosimetric precision at 11%.