Sensors (Dec 2023)

A Review on the Effects of Thermal Inversions and Electromagnetic Fields on Cell Cultures and Wireless Communications

  • Cibrán López-Álvarez,
  • María Elena López-Martín,
  • Juan Antonio Rodríguez-González,
  • Francisco José Ares-Pena

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s23239567
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 23
p. 9567

Abstract

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Thermal inversions, typical in the winter season, consist of cold air at the Earth’s surface being trapped under a layer of warmer air. Such an effect keeps normal convective overturning of the atmosphere from penetrating through. This phenomenon highly increases the toxicity of the atmosphere, while modifying its dielectric constant, resulting in major implications in terms of public health and wireless communications. Indeed, air pollution in large cities (related, in most cases, to particulate matter that consists of different chemical components, which can have warming or cooling effects) is primarily caused by chemical and photochemical reactions in the atmosphere. Appropriate usage of array antennas allows the effective tracking of changes in humidity (e.g., coated Yagi-Uda antennas, which do not interfere with 5G) and in the dielectric constant (e.g., optimized quasi-Yagi-Uda antennas, yielding to accurate measurements of sulfides and black carbon concentration). Remarkably, important health effects come from the combined action of electromagnetic fields with fine and coarse black carbon particles. The appearance of ducts, which are caused by thermal inversions, provokes the creation of super-refractive regions in the troposphere as well, which result in the anomalous propagation of wireless communications.

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