Abstract
The deployment of the 5th-generation cellular networks (5G) and beyond has triggered health concerns due to the electric and magnetic fields (EMF) exposure. In this letter, we propose a novel architecture to minimize the population exposure to EMF by considering a smart radio environment with a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). Then, we optimize the RIS phases to minimize the exposure in terms of the exposure index (EI) while maintaining a minimum target quality of service. The proposed scheme achieves up to 20% reduction in EI compared to schemes without RISs.