# 5G small cell / street-level node

> Pole-mounted nodes radiate roughly 10 W EIRP at street level, putting a residence 10 m away at about 8,000 µW/m² on the main beam — far below regulatory limits but often above precautionary building-biology bands.

- Canonical URL: https://emfbase.com/emitters/5g-small-cell
- Collection: Sources & emitters
- Record id: `emitters:5g-small-cell`
- Status: verified
- Last verified: 2026-08-12
- JSON: https://emfbase.com/api/emitters/5g-small-cell
- Also known as: small cell, 5G node, street pole antenna

## Key values

- **Category:** radiofrequency
- **Emission bands:** Mid band (1.7–2.6 GHz); C-band (3.3–4.2 GHz); mmWave (24–39 GHz)
- **Environments:** outdoor
- **Transmit power:** 10 W EIRP — Regulatory value — legally enforceable — Small cells span roughly 1–50 W EIRP depending on class and band; mmWave nodes use high EIRP with very narrow beams and poor wall penetration. [fcc-oet65]
- **Duty cycle:** Similar to macro sites: continuous control channels, load-dependent traffic, beamformed peaks.

## Field strength by distance

- **5 m:** 31,800 µW/m² — Computed estimate — S = EIRP / (4πd²) with EIRP = 10 W, d = 5 m — Main-beam free-space value. [fcc-oet65]
- **10 m:** 7,960 µW/m² — Computed estimate — S = EIRP / (4πd²) with EIRP = 10 W, d = 10 m — Main-beam free-space value. [fcc-oet65]
- **30 m:** 884 µW/m² — Computed estimate — S = EIRP / (4πd²) with EIRP = 10 W, d = 30 m — Main-beam free-space value. [fcc-oet65]
- **100 m:** 79.6 µW/m² — Computed estimate — S = EIRP / (4πd²) with EIRP = 10 W, d = 100 m — Main-beam free-space value. [fcc-oet65]

## Mitigations, most effective first

- **Determine which rooms have line of sight to the node; mmWave and C-band are strongly attenuated by walls and glass coatings.** — Line of sight is the single biggest factor in indoor levels from street-level nodes.
- **Apply RF window film or shielding paint to the facing wall and window, then re-measure.** — Typical installed shielding of 20–30 dB reduces incident power density by 99–99.9%.

## Measure with

- Broadband RF power-density meter
- RF spectrum analyser

## Related records

- [Macro cell tower (LTE / 5G sector antenna)](https://emfbase.com/emitters/cell-tower): Sector antennas radiate on the order of 1000 W EIRP per sector on the main beam, which is aimed above and away from the tower base — ground-level exposure directly beneath a tower is usually lower than at a few hundred metres away.
- [Swiss installation limit value for mobile phone antennas](https://emfbase.com/limits/swiss-installation-limit-mobile-antennas): 4–6 V/m at places of sensitive use depending on band — about 100 times lower in power density than ICNIRP's reference level.

## Sources

- `fcc-oet65` Federal Communications Commission, Office of Engineering and Technology (1997). *OET Bulletin 65: Evaluating Compliance with FCC Guidelines for Human Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields*. https://www.fcc.gov/general/oet-bulletins-line — government, link checked 2026-08-12
- `itu-fs-relations` International Telecommunication Union. *Free-space path loss and power density relations (ITU-R P.525)*. https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.525/en — standard, link checked 2026-08-12

Data licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Dataset version 2026.08.1. Retrieved from EMFBase, https://emfbase.com.

This record is reference data, not medical or legal advice. Regulatory limits, scientific guidelines and precautionary values are labelled separately and answer different questions.