Plane‐wave spectrum approach for the calculation of electromagnetic absorption under near‐field exposure conditions

Abstract

The exposure of humans to electromagnetic near fields has not been sufficiently emphasized by researchers. We have used the plane‐wave‐spectrum approach to evaluate the electromagnetic field and determine the energy deposited in a lossy, homogeneous, semi‐infinite slab placed in the near field of a source leaking radiation. Values of the fields and absorbed energy in the target are obtained by vector summation of the contributions of all the plane waves into which the prescribed field is decomposed. Use of a fast Fourier transform algorithm contributes to the high efficiency of the computations. The numerical results show that, for field distributions that are nearly constant over a physical extent of at least a free‐space wavelength, the energy coupled into the target is approximately equal to that resulting from plane‐wave exposure.