Effects of microwave irradiation on modern Telecom devices - failure thresholds of five mobile phones

This paper describes our vulnerability measurements on some mobile phones with pulsed fields in the frequency range between 0.15-3.2 GHz. The experiments have been carried out in our field coupling facility, which consists of an asymmetric triplate transmission line and a high power pulsed signal source. At the position of the test objects field strengths up to 4 kV/m can be achieved, the pulse length and pulse repetition can be varied between 0.25-10 micro seconds and 1-10000 Hz, respectively. In most cases the receiving capability with regard to the GSM net was reduced permanently. In three cases the hardware was destroyed, that is, the mobile phones were not able to communicate furthermore. The destruction thresholds were 3.3 kV/m and 1 kV/m, respectively.