On September 2021, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) announced the 2021 IEC 1906 Award winners. This award recognizes an individual’s long-standing and remarkable contribution to IEC Working Groups.
 

One of the 2021 IEC 1906 Awards was given to Mr. Kai Niskala from the Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research in recognition of his outstanding leadership of the IEC Technical Committee 106 (TC 106) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEC/IEEE JWG12)’s Joint Working Group 12, which studied the measurement methods to assess the power density close to the head and body. This was a Joint Working Group with the IEEE International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety (IEEE ICES).

Mike Wood, the IEC TC 106 Chairman, wrote: “On behalf of the TC 106 Officers and all of our members, I would like to extend our congratulations for receiving the 2021 IEC 1906 Award. The 1906 Award recognizes your outstanding leadership and dedication as co-convenor of JWG 12, which was decisive for developing measurement techniques for 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) standards. It’s a fantastic achievement in what has been a very challenging time in the past 2 years.”

Since 2017, Niskala has represented Samsung in various IEC and IEEE activities, assessing exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) from mobile terminals. IEC/IEEE JWG12 and its sister committee, JWG11, have been developing the first International Standards for assessing power density related to the exposure of the RF-EMF from mobile terminals utilizing the 5G Frequency Range 2 (FR2) mmWave bands. In addition to representing Samsung in numerous IEC/IEEE Working Groups, Niskala has also been a member of multiple European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) Working Groups involving the harmonized standard (HS) for European market acceptance. Before joining Samsung, he worked for over 10 years at Nokia, where his last position was senior manager of EMF compliance, and then as a consultant at Mobile & Wireless Forum (MWF).

“After many years of working on specific absorption rate (SAR) compliance standards, it was an exciting new challenge to lead the development of the first International Standards on measuring mmWave power density. The importance and urgency of this work were very clear from the beginning of the project in early 2018. The launch of the first commercial 5G networks was just around the corner,” said Niskala. “Being a part of enabling the market entry for Samsung’s devices in the past 5 years, and especially the launch of new 5G FR2 devices, has been satisfying.”

Niskala’s award from the world’s leading standards organization results from Samsung’s strong commitment to EMF safety standardization and highlights the importance and long-term nature of its EMF-related market acceptance activities.