A Unified Quantitative Index to Assess Non-ionizing Radiation Safety

The enormous increase of intelligent devices for smart city development brings convenient services to consumers. The continuous radio waves emission raises the public's concern about the safety level of non-ionizing radiation (NIR). Global NIR safety guidelines have been devised to limit the radiation level in response to public concerns. However, there is no consensus on radiation safety restrictions among various standards, causing confusion and rendering the public difficult to adapt. To address this issue, in this article, a novel index, namely Non-ionizing Radiation Safety Index (NRSDex) is proposed. NRSDex is a unified quantitative evaluation of the NIR safety which mitigates the conflicting multiple relative standards and provides a comprehensive quantified index for decision making. The development of NRSDex is motivated by the IEEE P2668 global standard which aims to evaluate the Internet of Things (IoT) maturity by constructing an IoT index (i.e., IDex). A special form of IDex, referred as NRSDex, has been developed to provide a unified and quantified view of NIR safety to provide guidance for the public to understand the safety level. Besides, NRSDex provides insights to the specific NIR safety difference between numerous health hazard standards. To highlight the significance of NRSDex, the effects of NIR on the human body are revisited and the NIR safety standards adopted by numerous countries with top rank healthcare device markets are examined and benchmarked. The NRSDex is detailed with its framework, methodology, as well as case studies. © 2022 IEEE.