Approximation of aging effect on dielectric tissue properties for SAR assessment of mobile telephones

In electromagnetic dosimetry of children heads for mobile telephones, the dielectric properties of biological tissues for adults are so far being used due to the lack of the ones of children. In this paper, we derived an empirical formula according to Lichtenecker's exponential law for the complex permittivity of various tissues as a function of the hydrated rate or the total body water (TBW). We first examined its validity using the data measured by Peyman et al. for rats, and then applied the formula to the dielectric properties of 7-year-old and 3-year-old child head models by means of the relationship between the TBW and the age. With the dielectric properties for children derived in such an approach, we analyzed numerically the spatial peak specific absorption rate (SAR) for a 900-MHz mobile telephone in adult and child head models. As a result, we found that the dielectric properties for children do not affect significantly the 1- or 10- g averaged spatial peak SAR as well as the penetration depth. The finding could be qualitatively explained as cancellation of the increased conductivity and decreased electric field penetrating into the tissue because of the same degree of increase between the conductivity and permittivity in children compared to adults. Even in an extreme case, the age effect on the spatial peak SAR of dielectric properties is still within 10%.