Simple Modeling of an Abdomen of Pregnant Women and Its Application to SAR Estimation

Hiroki KAWAI
Koichi ITO
Masaharu TAKAHASHI
Kazuyuki SAITO
Takuya UEDA
Masayoshi SAITO
Hisao ITO
Hisao OSADA
Yoshio KOYANAGI
Koichi OGAWA

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E89-B    No.12    pp.3401-3410
Publication Date: 2006/12/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e89-b.12.3401
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Electromagnetic Compatibility(EMC)
Keyword: 
fetus,  pregnant women,  amniotic fluid,  SAR,  FDTD method,  

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Summary: 
This paper presents a simple abdomen model of pregnant women and the evaluation of the specific absorption rate (SAR) inside the proposed model close to normal mode helical antennas (NHAs), which are replacing the portable radio terminals for business at 150 MHz. First, dielectric properties of amniotic fluid and those of fetus of rabbit, which have about the same electrical properties as human, are measured. As a result, the conductivity of amniotic fluid is 1.8 times and that of fetus is 1.3 times higher than that of adult muscle at 150 MHz. The result also suggests the modeling of pregnant women including the amniotic fluid and the fetus is necessary. Next, a simple abdomen model of pregnant women based on the measurements of magnetic resonance (MR) images of Japanese women in the late period of pregnancy is proposed. Finally, the SAR inside the proposed abdomen model close to 0.11λ and 0.18λ NHAs is calculated using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. As a result, we have confirmed that the 10-g average SAR in the fetus is sufficiently less than 2 W/kg, when the output power of NHAs is 5 W, which is the maximum power of portable radio terminals in Japan.