Remote controllers for drones are a harmless source of radiation

Drone operators have asked the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) about the potential health impacts of remote controllers. As controllers are held quite close to the body and their operation is based on electromagnetic fields, concern about the matter is understandable. STUK is responsible for the supervision of the radiation safety of remote controllers, so we are also the correct party to address these questions

According to a Traficom regulation, the maximum power of a drone’s remote controller must not exceed 100 milliwatts. Their maximum power is so low that the use of a remote controller cannot in practice result in actual health effects. Reliable measurements naturally provide convincing data and a certainty on the matter. For this reason, STUK established a market surveillance project on remote controllers in which the radiation a person using a drone remote controller was exposed to was measured.

The drone remote controllers selected for the measurements were those sold to the general public. For example, remote controllers in military use were not included in the STUK surveillance project’s measurements.

Mobile phone exposure measurement equipment modified to suit drone remote controllers

STUK did not initially have any equipment that was designed for measuring radiation from drone remote controllers. However, as STUK also monitors exposure caused by mobile phones, it had equipment for measuring the radiation exposure caused by these. One of the objectives of the drone remote controllers measurement project was to modify this equipment so it could be used for measuring devices other than mobile phones. STUK has performed radiation measurements on mobile phones since 2003.

Inspector Jouko Rautio, who led the market surveillance project at STUK, is satisfied with the project’s results. “We were able to modify the equipment to also provide reliable results for remote controllers,” he says. STUK Laboratory Engineer Vesa Moilanen was responsible for the modification.

During the project, the SAR value for each remote controller was measured. This value indicates how much electromagnetic energy is absorbed by a human body when a device is used. The measurement results were not surprising. The measured values were very small.

"A drone operator is exposed to at most around one tenth of the permissible SAR value," says Jouko Rautio. “It must also be kept in mind that the permitted SAR value is very conservative, i.e. in order for an actual health hazard to materialise the value would have to be much higher than the permitted value.”