Authors: Zhang, Y.; Wang, S.; Wiart, J.
IEEE Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking, 2026, doi: 10.1109/TMLCN.2026.3714431
Abstract
The prediction of the electric field (E-field) plays a crucial role in monitoring radiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) exposure induced by cellular networks. In this paper, a deep learning framework is proposed to predict E-field levels in complex urban environments. First, the drive test measurement in Paris and Lyon and publicly accessible databases used to construct the training dataset are introduced, with a detailed explanation provided on how these datasets are formulated and integrated to enhance their suitability for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs)-based models. Then, the proposed model, ExposNet, which is a lightweight CNN-based framework, is presented. Two variants of the network structure are proposed, enabling per-frequency prediction and total E-field prediction. Extensive experimental analyses are conducted, including the comparison with a standard U-Net baseline and a classical Kriging baseline. Moreover, a detailed ablation study is conducted to quantify the contribution of each input component, and additional generalization experiments are performed on different test subsets. The overall results indicate that, despite being trained and tested on real-world measurements, the model performs well and achieves better accuracy compared to previous studies.