Employing electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in new wireless communication and sensing technologies has substantially increased the level of human exposure to EMF waves. This paper presents a useful insight into the interaction of electromagnetic fields with biological media that is defined by the heat generation due to induced currents and dielectric loss. The specific absorption rate (SAR) defines the heating amount in a biological medium that is irradiated by an electromagnetic field value. The paper reviews the radio frequency hazards due to the SAR based on various safety standards and organisations, including a detailed investigation of previously published work in terms of modelling and measurements. It also summarises the most common techniques utilised between 1978 and 2021, in terms of the operational frequency spectrum, bandwidth, and SAR values.

A closely packed wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)/diversity antenna (of two ports) with a small size of less than 18.5 mm by 18.5 mm is proposed for mobile communication applications. The antenna can be orthogonally configured for corner installation or by placing it on a back-to-back structure for compact modules. To enhance the isolation and widen the bandwidth, the antenna is structured with multiple layers having differing dielectric constants. The feeding through a via significantly reduces the ground waves. A multi-fidelity surrogate model-assisted design exploration method is employed to obtain the optimized antenna geometric parameters efficiently. The antenna design was investigated using electromagnetic simulation and a physical realization of the optimal design was then created and subjected to a range of tests. The specific parameters investigated included reflection coefficients, mutual coupling between the input ports, radiation patterns, efficiency and parameters specific to MIMO behavior: envelope correlation coefficient and pattern diversity multiplexing coefficient. It was found that the antenna has an impedance bandwidth of approximately 4 GHz, mutual coupling between input ports of better than −18 dB and an envelope correlation coefficient of less than 0.002 across the operating band. This makes it a good candidate design for many mobile MIMO applications.

Several works show that the linear Angle of Arrival (AoA) methods such as Projection Matrix (PM) have low computational complexity compared to the subspace methods. Although the PM method is classified as a subspace method, it does not need decomposition of the measured matrix. This work investigates the effect of the sampled columns within the covariance matrix on the projection matrix construction. To the authors’ knowledge, this investigation has not been addressed in the literature. Unlike the subspace methods such as Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC), Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Technique (ESPRIT), Minimum Norm, Propagator, etc., which have to use a specific number of columns, we demonstrate this aspect is not applicable in the PM method. To this end, the projection matrix is formed based on a various number of sampled columns to estimate the arrival angles. A theoretical analysis is accomplished to illustrate the relationship between the number of the sampled columns and the degrees of freedom (DOFs). The analysis shows that with the same aperture size, the DOFs can be increased by increasing only the number of sampled columns in the projection matrix calculation step. An intensive Monte Carlo simulation for different scenarios is presented to validate the theoretical claims. The estimation accuracy of the PM method, based on the proposed selected sampling methodology outperforms all the other techniques with less complexity compared to the Capon and MUSIC methods. The estimation accuracy is evaluated in terms of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and the Probability of Successful Detection (PSD). The results are presented and discussed.