Ear temperature increase produced by cellular phones under extreme exposure conditions

This paper deals with the numerical prediction of temperature increase in the inner ear of subjects exposed to the electromagnetic (EM) radiation of conventional cellular phones. Attention has focused on the geometrical model of the internal ear organs and on including the intrinsic heating of the phone in the numerical thermal analysis. To this aim, infrared (IR) thermographic data have been used as time-variant Dirichlet boundary conditions (BCs) on the touching ear-phone boundary, while new convective BCs are applied on the cells not in contact. Numerical results, obtained by a finite difference (FD) procedure, showed a maximum temperature increase of about 4 °C on the external ear, although significant thermal elevations were not observed in the most sensitive internal organs. These temperature rises are obtained under extreme exposure conditions, i.e., when forcing the phone at the maximum power of 250 mW for 30 min. © 2012 IEEE.