On the Uplink and Downlink EMF Exposure and Coverage in Dense Cellular Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

Abstract

Existing studies analyzing electromagnetic field (EMFE) in wireless networks have primarily considered downlink communications. In the uplink, the EMFE caused by the user's smartphone is usually the only considered source of radiation, thereby ignoring contributions caused by other active neighboring devices. In addition, the network coverage and EMFE are typically analyzed independently for both the uplink and downlink, while a joint analysis would be necessary to fully understand the network performance and answer various questions related to optimal network deployment. This paper bridges these gaps by presenting an enhanced stochastic geometry framework that includes the above aspects. The proposed topology features base stations modeled via a homogeneous Poisson point process. The users active during a same time slot are distributed according to a mixture of a Mat\'ern cluster process and a Gauss-Poisson process, featuring groups of users possibly carrying several equipments. In this paper, we derive the marginal and meta distributions of the downlink and uplink EMFE and we characterize the uplink to downlink EMFE ratio. Moreover, we derive joint probability metrics considering the uplink and downlink coverage and EMFE. These metrics are evaluated in four scenarios considering BS, cluster and/or intracluster densifications. Our numerical results highlight the existence of optimal node densities maximizing these joint probabilities.