This paper investigates the possibility to assess human exposure to signals emitted in 3G and 4G comunication standards by using software defined radio (SDR) platforms. The obtained results indicate that the critical parameters of the SDR platforms are the sampling rate and the resolution of the analog to digital converter (ADC). The accuracy of the signal level is mainly limited by the sampling rate, that can limit the channel bandwidth, and by the ADC resolution that can influence the dynamic range of the magnitude of the signal.