Space wave propagation at MF band and implications of the radiation pattern of monopoles in the reception of EMF levels

This paper shows the importance of characterizing exactly how the radiation pattern of any antenna in a real environment is, above all when we want to make predictions of field strength with guarantees. In particular we focus on the analysis of monopole antennas at Medium Wave, located in places where other set of antennas and metallic structures are usually located. We get differences in the H-plane up to 3 dB for the worst case due to the coupling between structures, and variations of 1.6 dB for typical soil conductivities, using MoM techniques.We create the RP-SPACEW tool, based on geometrical optics, to analyze the variation of electric field levels with the distance when considering different reception heights and elevation angles or tilts. Specifically, we have concentrated on areas close to the transmitters. For our scenarios, we obtain variations of electric field values up to 140 dB, at 10 km from the transmitter, for reception heights between 1.5 m and 2 km. We also calculate the electric field component due to the surface wave for contrasting the results between the space and surface components, and thus justifying in which situations the space wave can be essential for the signal reception and the exposure to electromagnetic fields.