Safe microwave inactivation of airborne viruses using compact smart antenna

Youssef, K.; Shoukralla, E. S.; Hanna, V. K.; Elkorany, A. S.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that broke out on December 2019 spread speedily throughout the world, resulting in serious economic problems and increasing the mortality rate. Preceding research illustrated that one of the main routes for the spread of COVID-19 is respiratory aerosol transmission, where the generation of the droplets is created by coughing, sneezing, breathing, and speaking. Therefore, innovative control methods are necessity needed to manage the epidemic. Microwave has been extensively applied to inactivate microorganisms like viruses in many different media. The previous techniques were applied in the laboratory just to virus samples. In this proposal, we use the microwave radiation to inactivate the airborne viruses in the ambient air inside the rooms of hospitals and clinics. The main contribution of this paper is to design a compact antenna array using smart antenna techniques to cover the room with uniform microwave power. It is taken into account that the radiated power is under the standard safety levels. © 2021 IEEE.