Effect of Wireless Network Radiation on Heart Rate Variability

—The health risk associated with the increased exposure to wireless network devices like Mobile Phones, Wi-Fi etc, had been area of concern. In this paper, the effects of wireless network radiations (WNR) on Heart Rate Variability (HRV) had been investigated. The two non-linear indices namely i) Approximate Entropy (ApEn) ii) Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) had been used for deciphering the hidden dynamics of HRV. The study comprised of 19 healthy male subjects in the age group of 23±4.3 (mean ± std dev) years. The Electrocardiogram (ECG) of each subject obtained under three different WNR exposure modes namely i) Least or minimum exposure: when WNR level is 0.49±0.12 mW/m 2 ii) Moderate exposure: when WNR level is 2.08±0.27 mW/m 2 iii) Maximum or calling mode exposure: when WNR level is 1.65±0.32 W/m 2. The results indicate that there is a significant increase in DFA scaling exponent when the WNR level changed from minimum to maximum value, as p-value <0.05, whereas the change in mean value of ApEn was not significant due to higher standard deviation among all the subjects. The WNR exposure caused changes in HRV indices and it varied with WNR level, but all the changes cannot be considered as p values were higher.