With today’s rapidly increasing presence of electronics and technology, more and more commercial and industrial products are emitting potentially harmful RF fields. As a result, various organizations and agencies are beginning to levy guidelines and allowable limits on human exposure to RF fields. For certain industries, it is now required that they measure the electromagnetic fields their products create and ensure that those fields stay within established limits.
To make electromagnetic field (EMF) measurement easier and more accurate, AR RF/Microwave Instrumentation has introduced a family of products including meters and sensor heads. These new AR safety products are superior in their measurement and analytical capability of these RF fields. They provide a simpler solution to EMF measurements, and compared to existing products, enable the use of less equipment to achieve the same or even more accurate results. Meter and sensor head combinations are available for both electric and magnetic fields ranging from DC to 40 GHz.
Safety Meters
AR’s Model SM400K and SM40G are state of the art solutions for the measurement and analysis of electromagnetic field safety applications. These portable and compact instruments operate over a wide range of frequencies while maintaining a small handheld footprint. They are user-friendly and provide very reliable measurements. In addition, they record the temperature of the surrounding environment as well as its GPS co-ordinates which can later be viewed through mapping software.
Typical applications for the control and verification of the minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to electromagnetic fields are:
- Industrial ovens, welding systems, RF heating, tempering and drying equipment
- Diathermy equipment and medical devices
- Electric generating plants and related systems
- Sensitive sites (imaging and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR))
- Railways and ground transportation systems
- Wireless telecom systems
Applications for the control and monitoring of population exposure in private environments are:
- High Voltage power lines
- Power and Electricity plants
- TV and radio transmission sites
Sensor Heads
To go along with the SM400K and SM40G RF safety meters is a full line of electric and magnetic field sensor heads. Each of the sensor heads is easily interchangeable through quick-change LEMO connectors and automatic sensor head detection in both meters. These sensor heads cover the frequency range from DC to 40 GHz, and field strengths of 0.2 – 20,000 V/m for electric fields and 20 nT to 15 T for magnetic fields.
EM Field Meter
The SM40G broadband EM Field Meter provides measurement capability over a wide frequency (DC to 40 GHz) of electric, magnetic and electromagnetic fields when used with the appropriate sensor head. By selecting the appropriate sensor heads for the desired field types, a single meter with removable sensor heads can replace multiple fixed-head dedicated field measuring meters.
The SM40G allows the user to perform continuous monitoring activities, with more than 24 hours of recording time, and to periodically store the measured values by activating a START/STOP function. The user can store up to 8 monitoring sequences/events before downloading the data to a PC. A maximum limit of 21,504 samples can be recorded as compared to a maximum limit of 5,000 samples for competitor RF safety meters.
Enabling GPS during outdoor monitoring allows recording location site of data that can be downloaded to a PC and viewed with mapping software. This standard feature is extremely useful for mapping RF intensity over a large area.
Hand-Held Analyzer
AR’s Model SM400K provides all of the measurement capability and features of the SM40G with the addition of being a high-performance hand-held analyzer from DC – 400 kHz, designed for measurement of electric and magnetic fields which are characterized by complex or impulse form factors. By designing the meter to accept removable sensor heads, the meter can be configured to allow usage in a wide variety of applications simply by attaching the desired sensor head. This flexibility allows a single meter with removable sensor heads to replace multiple fixed-head dedicated field measuring meters.
