A simulation study on the health concerns derived from GSM base station placement

In the last years a great concern has raised among population due to the placement of the base stations (BS) of cellular systems in urban areas. In some cases, it has been addressed with the (re)installation of BSs in far suburban areas. However, in these cases, mobile stations (MS) must raise transmission power. Thus, users may -potentially- suffer a higher radio exposure. In this paper we quantified the variation of the transmission power in this application scenario. The study has been done by means of the OPNET/GSM framework simulation tool. Suitable propagation models and the GSM power control algorithm have been added to the model, in order to compute the MS transmission power in a real environment. Results reveal a significative increment of the MS transmission power when the BS is relocated to suburban areas. Therefore, we conclude that it is necessary to introduce modifications in the GSM network architecture to solve this issue together with the BS placement problem. © 2006 IEEE.