Influence of beamforming on local exposure to massive MIMO 5G base stations

This paper deals with the impact of beamforming antennas on the local downlink exposure in a 5G network. Field strength measurements show that the local exposure maximum in a 5G cell changes according to the location of a moving user equipment (UE). When carrying out a download, the local exposure mainly depends on the azimuth angle between UE and 5G antenna. The impact is the strongest in the main lobe of the beams and reduces in the side lobes. In contrast, a comparison to passive antennas of a 4G base station on the same site shows that the local exposure in the cell is independent of the current location of the active UE.